The Iron Gate 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.72 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1960. The next wettest, 1.99 inches, fell in 2022.
Iron Gate’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 2,610 ft, a difference of 1,610 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 4,240 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Millboro Shale and Needmore Formation (shale, black-shale), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, shale. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 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 Iron Gate reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Jackson and the James: about 340 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Iron Gate; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Iron Gate has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Iron Gate normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 84°, in 1993; the record low 13°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.26 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Covington Filter Plant, 11 miles west, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
