The Martinsburg 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.
80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 77° in 2010.
Martinsburg’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Hills, about 1,030 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sanders Group (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.5 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 Martinsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dutch Creek, the South Fork Blue, the Blue River, 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 Martinsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Martinsburg 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, 17 miles southeast, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.