The Charleston 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
8° on Nov. 16, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 8° in 2019.
Charleston’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 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 Charleston reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Kalamazoo: about 80 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charleston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charleston has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Charleston normally reaches 48° and falls to 33°. The record high is 68°, in 1902; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Battle Creek Area threaded record (Battle Creek Kellogg Airport, 6 miles east-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
