The Rayburn 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
76° on Nov. 14, 1994, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 75° in 1949.
Rayburn’s center stands about 1,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 770 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Russell Hill, about 1,560 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glenshaw Formation (shale), 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 23×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 Rayburn reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cowanshannock Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,000 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 Rayburn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rayburn has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rayburn normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1994; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 2007.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Ford City 4 S Dam, 8 miles south, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
