The South Charleston 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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84° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 80° in 2006.
South Charleston’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bee Mountain, about 1,740 ft, 12 miles south-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 20×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
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 South Charleston reaches the Gulf of America by way of Davis Creek, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,740 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 South Charleston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Charleston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 South Charleston normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 74°, in 2010; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Charleston Wfo, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
