The Falling Waters 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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81° on Nov. 15, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 80° in 1931.
Falling Waters’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cross Mountain, about 2,070 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 7 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 Falling Waters reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Potomac: about 210 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Falling Waters; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Falling Waters 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 Falling Waters 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, 12 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
