The Upper Frankford 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1840. Next is 74° in 2009.
Upper Frankford’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fenton Knob, about 2,210 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Martinsburg Formation (shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 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 Upper Frankford reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bloser Creek, Conodoguinet Creek and the Susquehanna: about 130 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
50 miles of the trip are on Conodoguinet Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Upper Frankford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Upper Frankford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1840 at Carlisle Water Plant, 9 miles east, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
