The Southern Gateway 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.
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79° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 79° in 2024.
Southern Gateway’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hamiltons Thicket, about 480 ft, 12 miles west-southwest.
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 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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, silt. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million 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. 6 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 Southern Gateway reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of England Run and the Rappahannock: about 110 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Southern Gateway; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Southern Gateway has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Fredericksburg Sewage, 5 miles southeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
