The Moorefield 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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4.80 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 4.09 inches, fell in 1987.
Moorefield’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brock Mountain, about 1,230 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moorefield Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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. 2 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 Moorefield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Moorefield Creek, Miller Creek, Poke Bayou, the White River and the Mississippi: about 920 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moorefield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moorefield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Moorefield normally reaches 61° and falls to 39°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.27 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Batesville L&D 1, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
