The Afton 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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15° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 17° in 1933.
Afton’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 2,650 ft, a difference of 1,900 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Potatopatch Mountain, about 3,850 ft, 10 miles southwest.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metasandstone, metaconglomerate. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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.
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 Afton reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Andersons Creek, the Rockfish and the James: about 230 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Afton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Afton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Afton normally reaches 58° and falls to 40°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.36 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlottesville 2 W, 17 miles east, 490 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
