The Harriston 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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80° on Nov. 12, 1931, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1924.
Harriston’s center stands about 1,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 2,130 ft, a difference of 1,020 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Flat Mountain, about 3,390 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Elbrook Formation (dolostone, limestone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 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 Harriston reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Paine Run, the South River, the South Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 340 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Harriston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Harriston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Harriston normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 78°, in 1924; the record low 9°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Dale Enterprise, 17 miles north-northwest, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
