The Thurmond 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 cloudy
Cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 16, 1918, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 1958.
Thurmond’s center stands about 1,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 2,270 ft, a difference of 1,250 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Walnut Knob, about 3,480 ft, 8 miles east-southeast.
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 9×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Thurmond reaches the Gulf of America by way of the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,800 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 Thurmond; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thurmond has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Thurmond normally reaches 54° and falls to 29°. The record high is 77°, in 1993; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Beckley Va Hospital, 15 miles south-southwest, 880 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
