The Big Stone Gap 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
14° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 14° in 2019.
Big Stone Gap’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,470 ft to 3,340 ft, a difference of 1,870 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Knob, about 4,200 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Big Stone Gap reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Powell, the Powell, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Stone Gap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Stone Gap has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Stone Gap normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Big Stone Gap, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
