The Hanover 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.51 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1996. The next wettest, 2.64 inches, fell in 2006.
Hanover’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Windsor Formation (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Hanover reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Pamunkey and the York: about 120 river miles.
85 miles of the trip are on the Pamunkey.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hanover; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hanover has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hanover normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Ashland Hanover County Municipal Airport, 5 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
