The Century 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.
Century’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 1,780 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Deen Knob, about 2,110 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monongahela Group (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. 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 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 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 Century reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Run, the Buckhannon, the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,130 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 Century; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Century 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 Century 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, 8 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
