The Parcoal 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. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 15° in 2013.
Parcoal’s center stands about 1,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,510 ft to 3,160 ft, a difference of 1,650 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tea Creek Mountain, about 4,560 ft, 14 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Parcoal reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Elk River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Parcoal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parcoal has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 71 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 62 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Hacker Valley, 11 miles north, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
