The Union 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 13, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 76° in 1945.
Union’s center stands about 2,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,820 ft to 3,150 ft, a difference of 1,330 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wind Rock, about 4,140 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Greenbrier Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, shale. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Union reaches the Gulf of America by way of Indian Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,890 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 Union; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Union has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Union normally reaches 56° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1955; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.96 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Alderson, 11 miles northwest, 540 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
