The Parsons 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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79° on Nov. 14, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 77° in 1949.
Parsons’s center stands about 1,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 2,870 ft, a difference of 1,270 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Canaan Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 11 miles east-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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 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 Parsons reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Shavers Fork, the Cheat, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,110 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 Parsons; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parsons 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 Parsons 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, 17 miles southwest, 300 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
