The Norton 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 77° in 1949.
Norton’s center stands about 2,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,800 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 1,070 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pond Lick Mountain, about 4,020 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allegheny Formation (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 2 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 Norton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Grassy Run, the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,150 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 Norton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Norton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 69 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Norton normally reaches 55° and falls to 30°. The record high is 79°, in 1993; the record low 5°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Elkins Area threaded record (Elkins- Randolph County Airport, 7 miles east-southeast, 200 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
