The Harpers Ferry 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
74° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 71° in 1941.
Harpers Ferry’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lawrence Hill, about 1,180 ft, 15 miles north.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 454 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 447 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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. 3 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 Harpers Ferry reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cota Creek and the Mississippi: about 1,620 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Harpers Ferry; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Harpers Ferry has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Harpers Ferry normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1964; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Lynxville Dam 9, 3 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
