The Wattsburg 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.
14° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1873. Next is 15° in 1959.
Wattsburg’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,670 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baker Hill, about 1,900 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chadakoin Formation (siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 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 Wattsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of French Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,150 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wattsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wattsburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 104 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Wattsburg normally reaches 51° and falls to 37°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 18°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.27 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1873 from the Erie Area threaded record (Erie International Airport, 20 miles west-northwest, 560 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.