The Ravenswood 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.
8° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 11° in 1957.
Ravenswood’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Weed Knob, about 1,180 ft, 14 miles east.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 Ravenswood reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,720 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 Ravenswood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ravenswood has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Ravenswood normally reaches 59° and falls to 32°. The record high is 80°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Ripley, 9 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.