The Mineral 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.98 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1916. The next wettest, 4.01 inches, fell in 1926.
Mineral’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 320 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chopawamsic Formation - Interlayered felsic and mafic metavolcanic rocks, from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metavolcanic. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, schist. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite, quartz-monzonite, granodiorite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 324 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.
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 Mineral reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Freshwater Creek, the North Anna, the Pamunkey and the York: about 170 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Pamunkey.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mineral; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mineral has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Mineral normally reaches 58° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1985; the record low 8°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.67 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Louisa, 6 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
