MetaChat - What is geographically interesting about your area?

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30 March 2009

What is geographically interesting about your area? I was in Maine once in a town that was "exactly halfway between the North Pole and the Equator." →[More:]I just read about the northernmost paved road in Eastern Canada. And I am vaguely near Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, which is known as having the "world's worst weather" and holds the record for highest measured surface winds.

What is unusual or significant in your geographical area?

post by: Melismata at: 13:30 | 31 comments

I'm often surprised to remember that DC is only a few feet above sea level, and that the Potomac is quite tidal.

posted by mrmoonpie 30 March | 13:39

The Savannah River downstream of the Savannah River Site is one of the more radioactively contaminated sites on earth that is still accessible by private citizens. Yeah, I used to work there.

What do EPD’s monitoring results show?

Recent EPD monitoring shows elevated tritium
(H-3) in virtually all media – air, surface water,
groundwater, rain, milk, vegetation, fish and
game; cobalt 60 (Co-60) in river sediment;
strontium 90 (Sr-90) in leafy vegetation and fish;
iodine-129 (I-129, an extremely long-lived fission
product) in surface water; cesium 137 (Cs-137) in
deer, fish, soil and river sediment; plutonium
238 (Pu-238) in river sediment; and plutonium
239 (Pu-239) in soil and river sediment.

How significant are EPD’s findings?

Tritium (H-3) in water ranges from 5% of EPA’s
Drinking Water Maximum Contaminant Level
(MCL) in Savannah, to well over 100% of the
MCL at the mouths of SRS site streams. I-129 in
surface water at the mouth of Four Mile Creek
typically runs 25% - 50% of the MCL for I-129.
Cs-137 in fish, while not sufficiently elevated to
cause any short term health concern, is
sufficiently elevated to cause concern for persons
who eat significant quantities of fish over several
years, particularly fish caught in or near the
mouths of SRS site streams. Sr-90 in vegetation,
again while not sufficiently elevated to cause
short-term health concerns, may be of concern
for those whose diet contains significant
quantities of leafy vegetables.

posted by Ardiril 30 March | 13:47

Well, if you count geology as well as geography, we just had an earthquake here. It was a fun ride up here at work in a tall building on wobbly ground by the salt flats.

posted by tangerine 30 March | 13:59

That's so weird, tangerine -- I had a dream last night about being in an earthquake.

posted by mudpuppie 30 March | 14:10

Uh, nothing. This is Essex, you know. It's the New Jersey of the UK.

posted by essexjan 30 March | 14:48

I use to live, before I moved away, right across the street from the highest point on Manhattan (and where Fort Washington was before it was surrendered to the British).

posted by stynxno 30 March | 14:56

Mt. Mitchell, highest point east of the Rockies. Also, we have more biodiversity than anywhere else in the US.

posted by mygothlaundry 30 March | 15:30

Los Angeles is the only city I've lived with such distinct microclimates. In the summer, temps can easily get over 100 in the Valley or Pasadena while staying in the 70s or low 80s along the coastlines less than 15 miles away.

Even the difference between where I work and where I live (just 8 miles apart) can be really striking -- I'll leave the house wearing something that's suited for our neck of the woods, and then get to work 25 mins. later and discover that I'm dressed entirely incorrectly for the weather at the museum.

Also: earthquakes, and the ability to swim in the ocean at breakfast, go skiing after lunch, and be in the desert for dinner.

posted by scody 30 March | 15:41

Supposedly, we're located on the fastest-moving tidal river in the country. Or maybe on the Eastern seaboard. This site says "third fastest in North America" but gives no clue as to whether the others are Canadian or Mexican or what.

I understand the claim is somewhat disputable, but I'm here to tell you it's wicked freakin' fast. The kind of place you would never, ever go in a kayak and would think twice with even a very large sailboat. It's narrow, too, totally unforgiving. Last year while waiting to go over the drawbridge I saw someone get their sailboat turned broadside to the current upstream of the bridge and get carried downriver, lickety-split, right toward the bridge footings. They were hung up trying to get the jib down so they could right themselves, and at the last minute he managed it - wheeew - but it was closer than close and it happened so fast. You could almost hear the entire drawbridge ease up as everyone watching breathed again.

posted by Miko 30 March | 15:45

I live in Kansas, which is home to the Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States.

posted by amyms 30 March | 16:03

Washington (state) has the Western most point in the lower 48 and the second highest mountain. It also has year-round glaciers, desert climates and rain forests, three dormant volcanoes plus Mt. St. Helens (I think it is still classified as active).

The Straight of Juan de Fuca, including the San Juan Islands, gets half the rain Seattle does.

posted by trinity8-director 30 March | 16:28

British Columbia is larger than every US state except Alaska. It has a population of 4.31 million/7.5 per sq. mile. For comparison, California has 36.7 million/217 per sq. mile.

BC is also The Most Beautiful Place on Earth™.

posted by deborah 30 March | 16:54

Toruń is sort of, depending on who you include, 50 miles or so east of the exact center of Europe. Iceland is out, as are the Franz Josef Islands; apparently in a Europe bounded by Gibraltar, Crete, northern Norway and the Caucasus, my province is right in the thick of things (which makes sense seeing as we've been invaded, oh, fifty times or so).

Our neighbors to the northeast, Lithuania, claim the center of Europe as their own and have a nifty park (founded by a nineteen-year-old!); the center of the now-27-member EU lies in the German state of Hesse.

In the human geography department, and further tying Toruń to Lithuania (and to our southeastern neighbor, Ukraine) is the fact that our local university began when educated Poles, among them virtually the entire professorships of medicine, mathematics, the humanities, and the social sciences, were booted out of Vilnius and Lvov after Poland lost the territory around those cities following World War II. Most of the medical professors went to Gdańsk to found the medical university there, while many, many of the others gave birth to the Nicolas Copernicus University here in Toruń.

posted by mdonley 30 March | 16:56

We have what may be the steepest city street in the world and have 712 public staircases within the city limits. Many of the staircases are actually legal streets with houses on either side of them and people with really good calf muscles living there.

posted by octothorpe 30 March | 17:27

Eugene is at the southern end of the Willamette Valley - Puget Sound Trough. We are at 400' or so above sea level, and this falls gradually until at Olympia, it goes below sea level, hence the Sound.

The eastern slope of the Coast Range in Oregon is a world class Pinot Noir region.

In the Oligocene, Eugene was under water, just off the coast. You can dig up clams in the clay in your garden.

posted by danf 30 March | 17:35

The Sound is below sea level?

posted by mudpuppie 30 March | 17:37

Well the underwater part of it is. The parts above the water, the islands and such, are there because of the dirt that the glaciers pushed around during the last ice age. And then a lot of the southern Sound is volcanic deposits from Rainier. But the whole region is there because of faulting which has moved the Coast Range north and west (see the right-hand jog of the Columbia at Portland for illustration).

posted by danf 30 March | 17:44

Los Angeles is the only city I've lived with such distinct microclimates.

Growing up next to the beach, it was always amazing in July to see the people come from inland ready for a day at the beach, thinking it will be as hot (or at least sunny) and finding, instead, jacket-weather fog.

posted by danf 30 March | 17:45

Fort Worth is where the West begins. (Dallas is an eastern city, at least according to us across the county line.)

posted by Doohickie 30 March | 18:20

Outside of Olympia, WA we have the Mima Mounds, which are just plain weird. The Hoh Rain Forest is an amazing place, and one of the largest temperate rain forests in the world

posted by evilcupcakes 30 March | 21:09

I'm about 20 min from Niagara Falls, so there's always that. Buffalo itself is on the Niagara River where it meets Lake Erie, and you can see a foreign country with the naked eye year round. In fact, the next closest city to Buffalo is in Canada- Fort Erie.

We also have some of the nicest summers in the Northeast- for real. People always think Buffalo=Snow, but our summers are usually sunny, not too humid, and rarely going over the mid 80s. My mom and sister left the area and both talk about how they miss Buffalo summers, which are apparently far less rainy than New England's. It's because of the lake. The water never gets hot enough to make things humid, since it freezes every winter and sometimes doesn't defrost all the way until May.

posted by kellydamnit 30 March | 23:43

Hey, essexjan, I'm from New Jersey!! :^) The good stuff is; I'm just over an hour from Philadelphia; New York is under two hours away; the same with Cape May and it's glorious Victorian homes; Six Flags Great Adventure is 15 minutes from my house; I can reach the Atlantic Ocean or the Delaware River in under an hour each way. Centrally located, with a bit of everything. New Jersey is perfect!

Okay, except taxes, etc. But I like it here!

posted by redvixen 31 March | 08:40

(We are going to Cape May for a little off-season vacationing in a couple of weeks, redvixen. I've never been. Victorian homes, huh? Nice.)

posted by gaspode 31 March | 08:58

A big chunk of downtown San Francisco is built on buried ships. Sometimes the ships get dug up during construction projects.

posted by kirkaracha 31 March | 11:44

Badwater Basin, in Death Valley, is the lowest point in the contiguous United States (and all of North America), and it's only 85 miles from Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous US.

posted by kirkaracha 31 March | 11:49

The city of Sao Paulo is crossed by Tropic of Capricorn (almost all of the city is south of it, so, not technically "tropical").

Seattle is the only place where it both never snows (if you ask natives why nobody here can drive in winter conditions), and it snowed every year in recorded history. The latitude kind of screws up the law of the excluded middle, and around here it's more of a guideline.

posted by qvantamon 31 March | 13:20

Keep in mind that my concept of "recorded history" extends for as long as I lived here. Before I moved here, it was pre-history.

posted by qvantamon 31 March | 13:26

Columbia, MO is located roughly equidistant to St. Louis and Kansas City. We have Karst Geology, so lots of caves. The University of Missouri is the first public university west of the Mississippi.

posted by Schyler523 31 March | 14:12

Daytona Beach is 10 feet above sea level. I'm sure there are other cool geographical facts that I can't remember.

We are close to the St. John's river, which flows north. Pretty neat.

posted by LoriFLA 31 March | 19:56

The place I live is more average than most.

posted by catfry 01 April | 07:43

I live in Vancouver

I think its a pretty beautiful part of the world

now that i have a larger dimension monitor , i guess i need to reformat my pic galleries page . Ooooooooops

have a look around

posted by rollick 01 April | 11:00

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