The West Point 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
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Partly cloudy
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Showers likely
−9° on Nov. 14, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is −7° in 1916.
West Point’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Greenhorn Limestone and Graneros Shale (shale, limestone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. 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, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 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 Point reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Elkhorn, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Point; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Point has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 West Point normally reaches 48° and falls to 26°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.36 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at West Point, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
