The Shenandoah Retreat 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
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82° on Nov. 16, 1931, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1900. Next is 81° in 1909.
Shenandoah Retreat’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 1,550 ft, a difference of 1,180 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Raven Rocks, about 1,470 ft, 1 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chilhowee Group (quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Shenandoah Retreat reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shenandoah Retreat; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shenandoah Retreat has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Shenandoah Retreat normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1900 at Purcellville, 8 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
