The Baltimore 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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68° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 68° in 2022.
Baltimore’s center stands about 1,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 1,330 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ludlow Mountain, about 3,350 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Baileys Mills tonalitic gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.6 billion 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 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite, mica-schist. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Paragneiss, quartz-feldspar-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.4 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 428 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 Baltimore reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Black River and the Connecticut: about 200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Baltimore; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Baltimore has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Baltimore normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 62°, in 2016; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Springfield Hartness State Airport, 3 miles east-southeast, 560 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
