The Junior 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.
79° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 77° in 1949.
Junior’s center stands about 1,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,730 ft to 2,750 ft, a difference of 1,020 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pond Lick Mountain, about 4,020 ft, 13 miles east-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Junior reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,140 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 Junior; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Junior has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Junior normally reaches 55° and falls to 30°. The record high is 79°, in 1993; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Elkins Area threaded record (Elkins- Randolph County Airport, 8 miles southeast, 200 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.