The St. Charles 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 78° in 1993.
St. Charles’s center stands about 1,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,450 ft to 3,340 ft, a difference of 1,890 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 12 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wise Formation (sandstone, shale, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 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.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 St. Charles reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Powell, the Powell, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 St. Charles; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. Charles has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 St. Charles normally reaches 59° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1931; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.05 in, fell in 1989.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 at Pennington Gap, 4 miles southeast, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
