Cherry Springs State Park - Geology and Climate

Geology and Climate

Cherry Springs State Park is at an elevation of 2,300 feet (701 m) above sea level, atop the Allegheny Plateau and "near the glaciated boundary". The plateau and the Appalachian Mountains were all formed in the Alleghenian orogeny some 300 million years ago, when Gondwana (specifically what became Africa) and what became North America collided, forming Pangaea. Although the region appears mountainous, these are not true mountains: instead millions of years of erosion have made this a dissected plateau, causing the "mountainous" terrain seen today. The hardest of the ancient rocks are on top of the ridges, while the softer rocks eroded away forming the valleys.

The park is in the West Branch Pine Creek drainage basin, where the underlying rocks are primarily conglomerate, sandstone, and shale. Two major rock formations are present in Cherry Springs State Park, both at least partly from the Carboniferous period. The youngest of these, which forms the highest points in the park, is the early Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation, a gray conglomerate that may contain sandstone, siltstone, and shale, as well as anthracite coal. The lower formation is the late Devonian and early Mississippian Huntley Mountain Formation, which is made of relatively soft grayish-red shale and olive-gray sandstone. Outside the park the creek has cut down into the Devonian Catskill Formation, a reddish sandstone.

The Allegheny Plateau has a continental climate, with occasional severe low temperatures in winter and average daily temperature ranges of 20 °F (11 °C) in winter and 26 °F (14 °C) in summer. The mean annual precipitation for the West Branch Pine Creek watershed is 40 to 42 inches (1,016 to 1,067 mm). January is the coldest month at Cherry Springs, July the warmest, and June the wettest. The highest recorded temperature at the park was 94 °F (34 °C) in 1966, and the record low was −28 °F (−33 °C) in 1963.