The Byrdstown 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 1951. Next is 16° in 2014.
Byrdstown’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 1,350 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Skinner Mountain, about 1,830 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Louis Limestone and Warsaw Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. 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.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 3 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 Byrdstown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Town Branch, the Wolf River, the Obey, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,450 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake and Cordell Hull Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Byrdstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Byrdstown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 59 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Jamestown, 15 miles southeast, 680 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
