The Charles Town 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
81° on Nov. 15, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 80° in 1931.
Charles Town’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 420 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Raven Rocks, about 1,470 ft, 9 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conococheague Formation (limestone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 16×. 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. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 Charles Town reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Evitts Run, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charles Town; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charles Town has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Charles Town normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1989; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.41 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 from the Martinsburg Area threaded record (Martinsburg Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport, 11 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
