The West 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.
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11° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 14° in 1996.
West Union’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Owlshead, about 1,430 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dunkard Group (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Carboniferous to Permian, 252 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 29×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
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 West Union reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Island Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,860 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 West Union; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Union has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 West Union normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 77°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at West Union 2, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
