The Free Union 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
3.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.37 inches, fell in 1927.
Free Union’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hightop, about 3,590 ft, 13 miles north.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granulite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 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. 7 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 Free Union reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Buck Mountain Creek, the South Fork Rivanna, the Rivanna and the James: about 210 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Free Union; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Free Union has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Free Union normally reaches 60° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.23 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Charlottesville Area threaded record (Charlottesville Albemarle Airport, 6 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
