The London 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.53 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1954. The next wettest, 3.34 inches, fell in 1957.
London’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cutoff Mountain, about 1,720 ft, 11 miles east.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 London reaches the Gulf of America by way of Whitley Branch, the Little Laurel, the Laurel, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,610 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake, Lake Cumberland, Cordell Hull Reservoir and Laurel River 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 London; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
London has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 London normally reaches 58° and falls to 36°. The record high is 79°, in 1993; the record low 12°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 1.51 in, fell in 2007.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at London Corbin Airport, 3 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
