The Martinsburg 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 69° in 1964.
Martinsburg’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,870 ft, a difference of 1,140 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gomer Hill, about 2,140 ft, 6 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Trenton Group (limestone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 Martinsburg reaches Lake Ontario by way of Roaring Brook and the Black River: about 70 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Martinsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Martinsburg has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 127 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Martinsburg normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 65°, in 1930; the record low 1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Lowville, 4 miles north, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
