The Matoaka 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 8° in 1986.
Matoaka’s center stands about 2,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,370 ft to 3,010 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huff Knob, about 3,560 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pocahontas 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 11×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Matoaka reaches the Gulf of America by way of Widemouth Creek, the Bluestone, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,900 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 Matoaka; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Matoaka has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 35 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Matoaka normally reaches 53° and falls to 35°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 from the Bluefield Area threaded record (Bluefield Mercer County Airport, 9 miles south-southeast, 420 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
