Features
The area around High Knob is dominant structural feature of the Powell Valley Anticline of the Cumberland Mountain Overthrust Block. With its adjoining faults (Hunter Valley-Clinchport system), this region possesses the greatest concentration of significant caves in Virginia.
The summit of High Knob in particular exerts a significant impact upon the climate of southwestern Virginia and surrounding areas, being one of the rainiest and snowiest locations in both Virginia and the southern Appalachians.
This orographically forced climate has, through the vastness of time, worked in intimate union with the geology and topography to create a richly diverse landscape possessing vast biological diversity.
High Knob unofficially holds the record for the most snow ever measured in Virginia during a single season, with 200.5 inches (509 cm) during the 1995–96 winter.
During a typical year, 60.0 inches to 70.0 inches (152.4 cm to 178.0 cm) of total precipitation falls across the area, to make it one of the wettest areas north of the Great Smokies, and the wettest in Virginia for which there are available records. Significant additional moisture contributions occur from fog drip off trees and rime deposition on trees, with many days during the year being spent amid orographic feeder clouds that cap its upper elevations.
On a clear day, four other states can be seen from the summit: West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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