The Towanda 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.
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Towanda’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 780 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Robwood Mountain, about 2,350 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lock Haven Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Towanda reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Susquehanna: about 280 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
230 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Towanda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Towanda has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Towanda normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1902; the record low 7°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Waverly, 17 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.