The Benham 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
14° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 14° in 2019.
Benham’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 3,650 ft, a difference of 2,200 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 5 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Breathitt Formation, lower part (shale, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Benham reaches the Gulf of America by way of Looney Creek, the Poor Fork Cumberland, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake, Lake Cumberland and Cordell Hull Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benham has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Benham normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Big Stone Gap, 11 miles southeast, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
