The Floyd 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.58 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1995. The next wettest, 3.48 inches, fell in 2009.
Floyd’s center stands about 2,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,200 ft to 2,710 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buffalo Mountain, about 3,920 ft, 12 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashe Formation - Biotite gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Ultramafic, amphibole-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Floyd reaches the Gulf of America by way of Oldfield Creek, the Little River, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Floyd; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Floyd has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Floyd normally reaches 55° and falls to 34°. The record high is 69°, in 2005; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.46 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Christiansburg, 16 miles north-northwest, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
