The Rock Cave 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. 15, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 10° in 2019.
Rock Cave’s center stands about 1,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,430 ft to 1,980 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Germany Knob, about 3,510 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conemaugh Group (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Rock Cave reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flatwoods Run, the Little Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,920 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 Rock Cave; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Cave has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 55 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Rock Cave normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Rock Cave 2 NE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
