The Paris 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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9° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 11° in 1933.
Paris’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 1,840 ft, a difference of 1,270 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Knob, about 2,380 ft, 12 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Porphyoblastic Biotite-Plagioclase Augen Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-syenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 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 Paris reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Gap Run, Goose Creek and the Potomac: about 190 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Paris has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Paris normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1958; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.39 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Winchester 7 SE, 13 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
