The Brodhead 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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77° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 77° in 2020.
Brodhead’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Mountain, about 1,710 ft, 12 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wildie, Nada, Halls Gap, Holtsclaw Siltstone, Cowbell, Nancy, Kenwood Siltstone, New Providence Shale, Sunbury Shale, Berea Sandstone, and Bedford Shale, undivided; Borden Formation locally includes Renfro Member in eastern Kentucky, from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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. 4 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 Brodhead reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Dix, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lake on the way: Herrington Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brodhead; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brodhead has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Brodhead normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Crab Orchard 6 N, 6 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
