The Wharton 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 75° in 1993.
Wharton’s center stands about 1,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,610 ft to 2,150 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devies Mountain, about 2,780 ft, 7 miles west-southwest.
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 7 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Wharton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Sandy Creek, the Cheat, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,080 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 Wharton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wharton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 61 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Wharton normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Confluence 1 SW Dam, 13 miles east, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
