The Richmond 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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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1858. Next is 74° in 1902.
Richmond’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dans Pulpit, about 1,660 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Richmond reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Moselem Creek, Maiden Creek, the Schuylkill and the Delaware: about 160 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Schuylkill.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Richmond; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Richmond has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Richmond normally reaches 54° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1955; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1858 from the Reading Area threaded record (Reading 4 SW, 14 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
