The Winchester 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
82° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 80° in 1958.
Winchester’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Knob, about 1,460 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
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 42×. 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: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.3 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 Winchester reaches the Gulf of America by way of Strodes Creek, Stoner Creek, the South Fork Licking, the Licking, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,640 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 Winchester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Winchester has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Winchester normally reaches 56° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1927; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Mount Sterling, 14 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
