The Ashland 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.27 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.21 inches, fell in 2020.
Ashland’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 300 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene Sand and Gravel (gravel, sand), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
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 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Ashland reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mechumps Creek, the Pamunkey and the York: about 120 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Pamunkey.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Ashland normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 81°, in 1985; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ashland, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
