The Wardensville 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 cloudy; warmer
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80° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 79° in 1993.
Wardensville’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 2,380 ft, a difference of 1,440 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mill Mountain, about 3,300 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 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, chert. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 8 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 Wardensville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Cacapon and the Potomac: about 330 river miles.
250 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wardensville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wardensville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Wardensville normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Woodstock 2 NE, 14 miles south-southeast, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
