The Fairchance 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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7° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 10° in 1967.
Fairchance’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 2,430 ft, a difference of 1,430 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devies Mountain, about 2,780 ft, 6 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Casselman Formation (shale, clastic), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Fairchance reaches the Gulf of America by way of Georges Creek, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,040 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairchance; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairchance has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairchance normally reaches 55° and falls to 36°. The record high is 78°, in 1993; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Morgantown Area threaded record (Morgantown Municipal Airport, 15 miles southwest, 140 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
