The High Bridge 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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12° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 12° in 2019.
High Bridge’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burdette Knob, about 1,100 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows High Bridge Group (limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 35×. 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: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 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 High Bridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 High Bridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
High Bridge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 High Bridge normally reaches 56° and falls to 37°. The record high is 77°, in 1971; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.52 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Lexington Area threaded record (Lexington Bluegrass Airport, 16 miles north-northeast, 180 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
