The Big Island 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
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4.64 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 4.11 inches, fell in 2009.
Big Island’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 900 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Apple Orchard Mountain, about 4,220 ft, 8 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mylonite, Mylonite Gneiss, and Cataclastic Rocks (mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite), from the Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granulite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million 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 Big Island reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the James: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Island; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Island has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Island normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Lynchburg Area threaded record (Lynchburg Regional Airport, 17 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
