The Franconia 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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83° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 80° in 1879.
Franconia’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 290 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gantt Hill, about 510 ft, 11 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene Sand and Gravel (gravel, sand), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Melange. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Franconia reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Long Branch, Accotink Creek and the Potomac: about 100 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Franconia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franconia has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Franconia normally reaches 59° and falls to 42°. The record high is 77°, in 1985; the record low 19°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.56 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Washington Area threaded record (Washington Reagan National Airport, 8 miles northeast, 240 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
