The Emporia 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.83 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 4.65 inches, fell in 2009.
Emporia’s center stands about 120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 220 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1.0 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 Emporia reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Metcalf Branch, the Meherrin and the Chowan: about 130 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Meherrin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Emporia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Emporia has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Emporia normally reaches 63° and falls to 38°. The record high is 78°, in 1989; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Emporia 1 WNW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
