The Dooms 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
15° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 17° in 1933.
Dooms’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 2,460 ft, a difference of 1,240 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Potatopatch Mountain, about 3,850 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waynesboro Formation (dolostone, limestone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 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.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 5 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 Dooms reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Sawmill Run, the South River, the South Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 350 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dooms; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dooms 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 Dooms 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, 19 miles east-southeast, 400 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
