The Ruckersville 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
3.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.37 inches, fell in 1927.
Ruckersville’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hightop, about 3,590 ft, 12 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granulite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 9 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 Ruckersville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Preddy Creek, the North Fork Rivanna, the Rivanna and the James: about 220 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ruckersville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ruckersville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ruckersville normally reaches 60° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.23 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Charlottesville Area threaded record (Charlottesville Albemarle Airport, 8 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
