The Wakefield 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 72° in 1993.
Wakefield’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Hill, about 800 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Peters Creek Schist (mica-schist, quartzite), from the Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metagabbro, amphibolite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Proterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Serpentinite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Wakefield reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Puddle Duck Creek, Peters Creek and the Susquehanna: about 20 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wakefield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wakefield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Wakefield normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 15°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Octoraro Lake, 8 miles east, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
