Third Hill Mountain Woodland View

A woodland on Third Hill Mountain

The camera stands on the slopes of Third Hill Mountain, one of the long parallel ridges that cross Berkeley County in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. Its frame opens onto a stand of tall, straight-trunked hardwoods, a mown clearing and a low wall of weathered fieldstone: the kind of quiet hillside woodland that covers much of this corner of the Appalachians.

Looking toward North Mountain

The view points east-southeast, toward North Mountain and the city of Martinsburg in the Great Valley beyond. Ridge after ridge runs from northeast to southwest across this part of the state, the classic folded landscape of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians.

An Appalachian forest through the seasons

This is deciduous Appalachian forest: broadleaf trees that leaf out in spring, close into a dense green canopy in summer, turn gold, orange and red in autumn and stand bare through winter, when the clearing opens up between the trunks. The camera is a simple, unhurried window on the changing woods of the Eastern Panhandle.

On-screen weather panel

A weather panel in the corner of the stream shows the temperature, wind and a three-day forecast for the site, which makes the camera a handy reference for conditions on the ridge alongside the live view of the woods.