The Moundsville 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is 75° in 1993.
Moundsville’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 680 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Culley Hill, about 1,580 ft, 13 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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 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 Moundsville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Grave Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,840 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 Moundsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moundsville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Moundsville normally reaches 55° and falls to 32°. The record high is 73°, in 1971; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 at Moundsville, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
