The Midlothian 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; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.05 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 2.76 inches, fell in 1902.
Midlothian’s center stands about 380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 420 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, gravel, sand. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 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. 5 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 Midlothian reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Falling Creek and the James: about 120 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Midlothian; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Midlothian has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Midlothian normally reaches 61° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 18°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Richmond Area threaded record (Richmond International Airport, 18 miles east, 210 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
