The Upper Providence 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.
81° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 76° in 1955.
Upper Providence’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Diamond Rock Hill, about 700 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Felsic and intermediate gneiss, from the Precambrian.
The section below crosses 17 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 11 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 Upper Providence reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Ridley Creek and the Delaware: about 60 river miles.
50 miles of the trip are on the Delaware.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Upper Providence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Upper Providence has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Upper Providence normally reaches 56° and falls to 39°. The record high is 76°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.64 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Philadelphia Area threaded record (Philadelphia International Airport, 12 miles east-southeast, 350 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.