The West Point 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.
13° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 15° in 1986.
West Point’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bee Knob Hill, about 1,010 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
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 West Point reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Salt River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,320 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 West Point; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Point has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 West Point normally reaches 58° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1902; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.44 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Louisville Area threaded record (Louisville International Airport, 17 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.