The Buckhannon 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1888. Next is 79° in 1993.
Buckhannon’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,400 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Run Hill, about 2,880 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 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 Buckhannon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Buckhannon, the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,150 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Buckhannon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buckhannon has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 39 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Buckhannon normally reaches 55° and falls to 31°. The record high is 73°, in 1909; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 at Buckhannon, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
