The Cooper 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 68° in 2012.
Cooper’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Harmon Mountain, about 750 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian granite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro, diorite, ultramafic. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Cooper reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Big Inlet, the Cathance Stream and the Dennys: about 20 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Cathance.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cooper; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cooper has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cooper normally reaches 46° and falls to 34°. The record high is 63°, in 2012; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1975.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Woodland, 14 miles north, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
