The Kanawha 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 79° in 1993.
Kanawha’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buzzard Rocks, about 1,270 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 30×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 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 Kanawha reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stillwell Creek, the Little Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kanawha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kanawha has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Kanawha normally reaches 55° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1993; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 2007.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 from the Parkersburg Area threaded record (Parkersburg/Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Airport, 9 miles north, 160 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
