The Goochland 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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Sunny
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5.04 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1938. The next wettest, 3.14 inches, fell in 2002.
Goochland’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Porphyroblastic Garnet-Biotite Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 52×. 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: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Goochland reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the James: about 140 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Goochland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goochland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Goochland normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1985; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Crozier, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
