The Passapatanzy 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.
5.00 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1959. The next wettest, 4.23 inches, fell in 2009.
Passapatanzy’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene Sand and Gravel (gravel, sand), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, peat. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Passapatanzy reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Muddy Creek and the Rappahannock: about 100 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Passapatanzy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Passapatanzy has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Passapatanzy normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 78°, in 1985; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Corbin, 7 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.