The Russell 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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6° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 7° in 1996.
Russell’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stewart Knob, about 1,040 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Breathitt Formation, upper part (sandstone, 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 38×. 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Russell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,620 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 Russell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Russell has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Russell normally reaches 54° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1931; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Ashland, 6 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
