The Birch River 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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Sunny
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12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 14° in 1991.
Birch River’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,120 ft to 2,280 ft, a difference of 1,160 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottle Knob, about 3,050 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kanawha Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 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 Birch River reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Birch, the Elk River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Birch River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Birch River has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Birch River normally reaches 58° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Sutton Lake, 12 miles north-northeast, 460 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
