The Harrisonburg 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
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
80° on Nov. 12, 1931, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 1924.
Harrisonburg’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 3,700 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Edinburg Formation, Lincolnshire and New Market Limestones, from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Harrisonburg reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Blacks Run, Cooks Creek, the North River, the South Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 350 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Harrisonburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Harrisonburg has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 19 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Harrisonburg normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 78°, in 1924; the record low 9°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Dale Enterprise, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
