The Orkney Springs 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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80° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 79° in 1993.
Orkney Springs’s center stands about 1,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 2,890 ft, a difference of 1,600 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rader Knob, about 3,370 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Millboro Shale and Needmore Formation (shale, black-shale), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 17 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 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. 11 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 Orkney Springs reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Creek, the North Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 310 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 Orkney Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orkney Springs has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Orkney Springs normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 79°, in 1955; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 at Woodstock 2 NE, 20 miles east-northeast, 870 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
