The Matoaca 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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21° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1979. Next is 22° in 2014.
Matoaca’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Matoaca reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Appomattox and the James: about 90 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Matoaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Matoaca has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1979 at Petersburg, 5 miles east, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
