The Gainesville 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.
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81° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 80° in 1985.
Gainesville’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wildcat Mountain, about 1,390 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Newark Supergroup; Sandstone, undifferentiated, from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
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 19×. 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.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 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 Gainesville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Broad Run, the Occoquan and the Potomac: about 130 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gainesville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gainesville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Gainesville normally reaches 57° and falls to 36°. The record high is 80°, in 1985; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 from the Sterling-Dulles Airport Area threaded record (Washington Dulles International Airport, 13 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
