The Belle Valley 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
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
3.02 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1895. The next wettest, 2.27 inches, fell in 2022.
Belle Valley’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 740 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Hill, about 1,280 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conemaugh Group (shale, siltstone, mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 36×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 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 Belle Valley reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Fork Duck Creek, Duck Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belle Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belle Valley has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belle Valley normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 75°, in 1909; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Zanesville Area threaded record (Zanesville Municipal Airport, 21 miles west-northwest, 140 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
