The McRoberts 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. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 12° in 2019.
McRoberts’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 2,280 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Halls Butt, about 3,070 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 299 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 McRoberts reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wright Fork, the Boone Fork, the North Fork Kentucky, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 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 McRoberts; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McRoberts has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 McRoberts normally reaches 56° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1994; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.35 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Clintwood 1 W, 11 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
