The Draper 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1920. The next wettest, 2.67 inches, fell in 2009.
Draper’s center stands about 2,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,840 ft to 2,950 ft, a difference of 1,110 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Rock, about 3,780 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician and Upper Cambrian Formations Undivided (limestone), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 6 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 Draper reaches the Gulf of America by way of Claytor Lake, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,940 river miles.
Lake on the way: Claytor 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 Draper; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Draper has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Draper normally reaches 56° and falls to 32°. The record high is 75°, in 1985; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Pulaski 2 E, 4 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
