The Cumberland 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
84° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1970. Next is 82° in 1985.
Cumberland’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 320 ft to 510 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Willis Mountain, about 1,040 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Porphyroblastic Biotite Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Paragneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, biotite-schist. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 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. 6 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 Cumberland reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bear Creek, the Willis and the James: about 180 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cumberland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cumberland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Cumberland normally reaches 61° and falls to 38°. The record high is 77°, in 1985; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1970 at Amelia Courthouse, 18 miles southeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
