The Payne Gap 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
12° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 12° in 2019.
Payne Gap’s center stands about 1,850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,440 ft to 2,950 ft, a difference of 1,510 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Halls Butt, about 3,070 ft, 12 miles southwest.
The section below crosses 9 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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 299 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Payne Gap reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Kentucky, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 Payne Gap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Payne Gap 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 Payne Gap 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, 9 miles east, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
