The Short Pump 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.27 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.21 inches, fell in 2020.
Short Pump’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 320 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Petersburg Granite, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. 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, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, gravel, sand. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Short Pump reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Tuckahoe Creek and the James: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Short Pump; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Short Pump has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Short Pump normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 81°, in 1985; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ashland, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
