The 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.
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12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 13° in 1986.
Jefferson’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quakers Knob, about 1,430 ft, 4 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monongahela Group (limestone, shale, sandstone), 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 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Jefferson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Scott Run, Cross Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Jefferson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jefferson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Jefferson normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Steubenville, 8 miles west-northwest, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
