The Hopewell 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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4.43 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1916. The next wettest, 3.20 inches, fell in 2020.
Hopewell’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 170 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chuckatuck Formation (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Hopewell reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cattail Creek, Bailey Creek and the James: about 75 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hopewell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hopewell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Hopewell normally reaches 63° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 17°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Hopewell, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
