The Mechanicsburg 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1920. The next wettest, 2.67 inches, fell in 2009.
Mechanicsburg’s center stands about 2,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,050 ft to 3,490 ft, a difference of 1,440 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugar Run Mountain, about 4,090 ft, 8 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 3 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 Mechanicsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Walker Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,930 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mechanicsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mechanicsburg has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Mechanicsburg normally reaches 56° and falls to 32°. The record high is 75°, in 1985; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Pulaski 2 E, 11 miles southeast, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
