The Virginia 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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62° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1986. Next is 60° in 2016.
Virginia’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,760 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pike Mountain, about 1,950 ft, 5 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gunflint (~1,878 Ma), Biwabik, and Emily Iron Formations (banded-iron-formation, sedimentary-breccia), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation, sedimentary-breccia. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro, pyroxenite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Virginia reaches Lake Superior by way of the East Two and the Saint Louis: about 130 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
110 miles of the trip are on the Saint Louis.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Virginia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Virginia has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Virginia normally reaches 35° and falls to 21°. The record high is 62°, in 1999; the record low 0°, in 1995. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1986 at Eveleth Waste Water Plant, 5 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
