The Blue Ridge 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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−4° on Nov. 14, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 5° in 1982.
Blue Ridge’s center stands about 6,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,330 ft to 6,890 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Mountain, about 7,380 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Permian sedimentary rocks (sandstone, limestone), from the Permian, 270 to 280 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 24 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 Blue Ridge reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Blue Ridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blue Ridge has a dry-summer warm-summer continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Blue Ridge normally reaches 56° and falls to 25°. The record high is 73°, in 1967; the record low −4°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Blue Ridge Ranger Station, 5 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
