The Ripley 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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8° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 11° in 1957.
Ripley’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Garnes Knob, about 1,240 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dunkard Group (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 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 33×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Mudstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Ripley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sycamore Creek, Mill Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,730 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 Ripley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ripley 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 Ripley 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
