The West Harrison 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.
10° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 10° in 2019.
West Harrison’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gobblers Knob Hill, about 1,040 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kope Formation (shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. 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, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 West Harrison reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Whitewater, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,470 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 West Harrison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Harrison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 West Harrison normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 76°, in 1931; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.71 in, fell in 1871.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Cincinnati Area threaded record (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, 17 miles south-southeast, 340 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.