The Max Meadows 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 cloudy
Cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 1955.
Max Meadows’s center stands about 2,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,010 ft to 2,700 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Bend, about 3,960 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 9 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 Max Meadows reaches the Gulf of America by way of McGavock Run, Reed Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Lake on the way: Claytor Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Max Meadows; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Max Meadows has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Max Meadows normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wytheville, 7 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
