The Luray 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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7° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 10° in 1967.
Luray’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hawksbill, about 4,030 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conococheague Formation (limestone), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 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. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Luray reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Hawksbill Creek, the South Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 280 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 Luray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Luray 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 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Luray normally reaches 57° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1989; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Luray 5 E, 4 miles east, 540 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
