The Summersville 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
80° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1967. Next is 75° in 1985.
Summersville’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,580 ft to 2,430 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Buck Knob, about 3,260 ft, 15 miles southeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Summersville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Summersville Lake, the Gauley, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lake on the way: Summersville Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Summersville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Summersville has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Summersville normally reaches 54° and falls to 32°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1967 at Summersville Lake, 5 miles south-southwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
