The Charlestown 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 77° in 2010.
Charlestown’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Hills, about 1,030 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
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 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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 Charlestown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pleasant Run, Silver Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,360 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlestown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlestown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Louisville Mcalpine, 14 miles south-southwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
