The Moorefield 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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80° on Nov. 12, 2006, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 77° in 2011.
Moorefield’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snyder Knob, about 3,060 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 4 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 Moorefield reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 350 river miles.
290 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moorefield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moorefield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Petersburg, 10 miles west-southwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
