The Brightwood 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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3.87 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1945. The next wettest, 2.37 inches, fell in 2022.
Brightwood’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hawksbill, about 4,030 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Layered Biotite Granulite and Gneiss (granulite, gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granulite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-syenite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 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. 10 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 Brightwood reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Robinson, the Rapidan and the Rappahannock: about 180 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Rappahannock.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brightwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brightwood has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Brightwood normally reaches 58° and falls to 34°. The record high is 69°, in 2007; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.78 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Somerset, 13 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
