The Independence 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
5.54 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1946. The next wettest, 5.24 inches, fell in 2020.
Independence’s center stands about 3,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,440 ft to 4,250 ft, a difference of 1,810 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Mountain, about 4,660 ft, 6 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Striped Rock Granite (granite, syenite), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite, syenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Independence reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peach Bottom Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,010 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 Independence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Independence has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Independence normally reaches 54° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1985; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.93 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Transou, 18 miles south-southwest, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
