The Thomas 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 7° in 2018.
Thomas’s center stands about 3,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,870 ft to 3,350 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Weiss Knob, about 4,460 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 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Thomas reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Blackwater, the Blackwater, the Black Fork, the Cheat, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,130 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thomas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thomas has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Canaan Valley #2, 8 miles south-southeast, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
