The Cowen 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.
Cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
7° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 15° in 2013.
Cowen’s center stands about 2,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,080 ft to 2,650 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snakeden Mountain, about 3,870 ft, 9 miles 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. 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 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 Cowen reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Ditch Run, the Gauley, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lake on the way: Summersville Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cowen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cowen 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, 17 miles north-northeast, 660 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
