The Spruce Hill plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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12° on Nov. 13, 1981, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 16° in 1986.
Spruce Hill’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 2,080 ft, a difference of 1,620 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Knob, about 2,160 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wills Creek Formation (shale), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Spruce Hill reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Tuscarora Creek, the Juniata and the Susquehanna: about 130 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spruce Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spruce Hill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Spruce Hill normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Lewistown, 10 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
