The Terra Alta 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.
Terra Alta’s center stands about 2,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,020 ft to 2,930 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hoye-Crest, about 3,360 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chemung Group (siltstone, sandstone), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 7 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 Terra Alta reaches the Gulf of America by way of Snowy Creek, the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,090 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Terra Alta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Terra Alta 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 Terra Alta 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, 8 miles east-southeast, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
