The Van 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
14° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 16° in 2019.
Van’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 1,880 ft, a difference of 1,050 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wriston Knob, about 2,920 ft, 15 miles east-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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 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 Van reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pond Fork, the Little Coal, the Coal, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,780 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 Van; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Van has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Van normally reaches 59° and falls to 36°. The record high is 83°, in 1909; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Logan, 16 miles west-southwest, 570 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
