The West Chester 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 77° in 1973.
West Chester’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 530 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-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Felsic gneiss, from the Precambrian.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 8 mi of the line.
Muscovite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 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. 6 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 West Chester reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Chester Creek and the Delaware: about 70 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 West Chester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Chester has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 West Chester normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 75°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 1950. The most rain on this date, 2.56 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Phoenixville 1 E, 13 miles north-northeast, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
