The Helvetia 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
8° on Nov. 15, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 10° in 2019.
Helvetia’s center stands about 2,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,090 ft to 3,340 ft, a difference of 1,250 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Elk Mountain, about 4,390 ft, 15 miles south-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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.6 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 Helvetia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Left Fork Right Fork Buckhannon, the Right Fork Buckhannon, the Buckhannon, the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,180 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 Helvetia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Helvetia has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Helvetia normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Rock Cave 2 NE, 12 miles north-northwest, 610 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
