The Mount Clifton 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. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 79° in 1993.
Mount Clifton’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 950 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Mountain, about 3,130 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beekmantown Group (dolostone, limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 18 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 12 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 Mount Clifton reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Creek, the North Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 300 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 Mount Clifton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Clifton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Mount Clifton normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Woodstock 2 NE, 16 miles northeast, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
