The Morgantown 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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5.85 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 5.26 inches, fell in 1929.
Morgantown’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 310 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catahoula formation (sand), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 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 Morgantown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Saint Catherine Creek and the Mississippi: about 390 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morgantown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morgantown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morgantown normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 87°, in 1921; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.29 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Natchez, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
