The Valley Head 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.
Cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 11, 2006, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 71° in 1993.
Valley Head’s center stands about 2,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,300 ft to 3,680 ft, a difference of 1,380 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 4,860 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chemung Group (siltstone, sandstone), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Shale, 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 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. 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. 3 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 Valley Head reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Tygart Valley, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,200 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 Valley Head; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valley Head has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 67 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Valley Head normally reaches 49° and falls to 28°. The record high is 71°, in 1994; the record low 5°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.70 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Bartow 1 S, 14 miles east, 500 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
