The Rainelle 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 16, 1918, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 1958.
Rainelle’s center stands about 2,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,390 ft to 3,340 ft, a difference of 950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Job Knob, about 4,340 ft, 15 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 5 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.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
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 Rainelle reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sewell Creek, the Meadow, the Gauley, the Kanawha, 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 Rainelle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rainelle has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Rainelle normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 78°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Beckley Area threaded record (Beckley Raleigh County Airport, 23 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
