Environment of West Virginia

West Virginia is also one of the cloudiest states in the nation, with the cities of Elkins and Beckley ranking 9th and 10th in the U.S. respectively for the number of cloudy days per year (over 210).

In addition to persistent cloudy skies caused by the damming of moisture by the Alleghenies, West Virginia also experiences some of the most frequent precipitation in the nation, with Snowshoe averaging nearly 200 days a year with either rain or snow.

An average of 34 inches (860 mm) of snow falls annually in Charleston, although during the winter of 1995–1996 more than three times that amount fell as several cities in the state established new records for snowfall.

Sometime between about 1,100 and 800 million years ago, lava was deposited in the extreme eastern part of the State forming our oldest exposed rock, the Catoctin Greenstone.

During this total interval of about 370 million years, most of the rocks exposed in Jefferson and eastern Berkeley counties and in scattered areas southwestward along the Virginia boundary were deposited.

During Middle and Late Devonian time the Acadian Orogeny, with the main uplift to the northeast, resulted in a further source for the predominantly clastic marine deposits of these epochs.

However, near the end of Devonian time, the sea was rapidly retreating westward and the continental red beds of the Hampshire Formation were being deposited over most of the State.

At the close of Mississippian time, about 310 million years ago, West Virginia was essentially a land area, subject to erosion.

Early in the succeeding Pennsylvanian Period, the area dropped to near sea level and for more than 50 million years continued to sink at about the same rate that deposition was taking place.

The oldest evidences of life found in West Virginia occur in rocks about 600 million years old, in the Antietam Formation of Lower Cambrian age.

The life zones of West Virginia transitions from large low-land farming valleys bordered with forest and meadow to high-land ridge flats and heavy forestlands, some with rocky ridge-line peaks.

[15] The Allegheny and Cumberland Plateaus of West Virginia are predominantly covered by hardwood forests, but along the Ohio River and its principal tributaries, the valuable timber has been removed and considerable areas have been wholly cleared over the centuries for farming and pasture lands.

Among the state's common shrubs and vines are the blackberry, black and red raspberry, gooseberry, huckleberry, hazel, and wild grape.