The Westminster 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.96 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1896. The next wettest, 3.56 inches, fell in 1935.
Westminster’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is John Mountain, about 2,230 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wallhalla metamorphic suite (hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mylonite, phyllonite. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 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 Westminster reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Colonels Fork Creek, Coneross Creek, the Seneca, Little Beaverdam Creek and the Savannah: about 320 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Westminster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Westminster has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Westminster normally reaches 62° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Walhalla, 6 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
