The Fort Chiswell 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
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Sunny
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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 1955.
Fort Chiswell’s center stands about 2,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,990 ft to 2,800 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Bend, about 3,960 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 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. 8 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 Fort Chiswell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Reed Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Lake on the way: Claytor Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Chiswell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Chiswell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Chiswell normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wytheville, 7 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
