The Powhatan 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.04 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1938. The next wettest, 3.14 inches, fell in 2002.
Powhatan’s center stands about 380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Porphyroblastic Garnet-Biotite Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million years old. About 0.5 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 Powhatan reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Fighting Creek, the Appomattox and the James: about 140 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Chesdin.
75 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Powhatan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Powhatan has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Powhatan normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1985; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Crozier, 9 miles north-northeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
