The Sperryville 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
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
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Mostly sunny
3.37 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1995. The next wettest, 1.93 inches, fell in 2010.
Sperryville’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 2,080 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hawksbill, about 4,030 ft, 12 miles southwest.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granulite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 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 Sperryville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Thornton, the Hazel and the Rappahannock: about 180 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Rappahannock.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sperryville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sperryville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Sperryville normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 68°, in 2011; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.92 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Sperryville, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
