The Bergoo 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.
7° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 15° in 2013.
Bergoo’s center stands about 2,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,730 ft to 3,590 ft, a difference of 1,860 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Red Spruce Knob, about 4,720 ft, 13 miles southeast.
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 6×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
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 Bergoo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Leatherwood Creek, the Elk River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,890 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bergoo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bergoo has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 71 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 62 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Hacker Valley, 10 miles north-northwest, 590 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.