The Jamestown 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.
12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 16° in 2014.
Jamestown’s center stands about 1,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,800 ft, a difference of 840 ft: hilly country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rockcastle Conglomerate (sandstone, conglomerate), 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 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.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, 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.
Limestone. 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. 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 Jamestown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rockcastle Creek, Buffalo Cove Creek, the East Fork Obey, the Obey, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,480 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 Jamestown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jamestown 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.