The Fort Ashby 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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Mostly cloudy; warmer
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79° on Nov. 15, 2011, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 78° in 2020.
Fort Ashby’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dans Mountain, about 2,860 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 16 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.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 10 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 Fort Ashby reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Patterson Creek, the North Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Ashby; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Ashby has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Ashby normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at Cumberland 2, 10 miles north, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
