The Rossmore 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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14° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 16° in 2019.
Rossmore’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,950 ft, a difference of 1,270 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Horsepen Mountain, about 2,490 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kanawha Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Rossmore reaches the Gulf of America by way of Island Creek, the Guyandotte, 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 Rossmore; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rossmore has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rossmore normally reaches 59° and falls to 36°. The record high is 83°, in 1909; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Logan, 4 miles north, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
