The Joppa 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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10° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 10° in 2019.
Joppa’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hairy Hill, about 520 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cretaceous undivided (sandstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Holocene, less than 66 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Joppa reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,000 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Joppa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Joppa has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Joppa normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 77°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Paducah Barkley Regional Airport, 11 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
