The West Jefferson 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 sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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4.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1896. The next wettest, 3.27 inches, fell in 1926.
West Jefferson’s center stands about 2,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,820 ft to 4,290 ft, a difference of 1,470 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snake Mountain, about 5,550 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashe Metamorphic Suite and Tallulah Falls Formation; Amphibolite, from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metadunite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 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 West Jefferson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Creek, the South Fork New, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,080 river miles.
Lake on the way: Claytor Lake.
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 Jefferson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Jefferson has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 West Jefferson normally reaches 56° and falls to 28°. The record high is 76°, in 1994; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Jefferson 2 E, 4 miles east-northeast, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
