The Elk Garden 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1911.
Elk Garden’s center stands about 2,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 2,640 ft, a difference of 1,190 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pigeonroost, about 3,530 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conemaugh Group (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 17 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.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 11 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 Elk Garden reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 360 river miles.
290 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elk Garden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elk Garden has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 105 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Elk Garden normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 3°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Oakland 1 SE, 13 miles west, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
