The Morgantown 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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7° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1872. Next is 10° in 1967.
Morgantown’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Devies Mountain, about 2,780 ft, 14 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 7 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.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Morgantown reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,050 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 Morgantown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morgantown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morgantown normally reaches 55° and falls to 36°. The record high is 78°, in 1993; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1872 from the Morgantown Area threaded record (Morgantown Municipal Airport, 2 miles northeast, 340 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
