The Ranson 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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81° on Nov. 15, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 80° in 1931.
Ranson’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 420 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Roundtop, about 1,670 ft, 15 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Elbrook Formation (limestone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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. 7 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 Ranson reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Evitts Run, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ranson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ranson has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ranson normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1989; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.41 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 from the Martinsburg Area threaded record (Martinsburg Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport, 10 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
