The Cumberland 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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14° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 14° in 2019.
Cumberland’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 3,420 ft, a difference of 2,130 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 7 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 6 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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.
Limestone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 299 to 422 million years old. About 0.3 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 Cumberland reaches the Gulf of America by way of 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 Cumberland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cumberland 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 Cumberland 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, 13 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
