The Stephens City 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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9° on Nov. 14, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 11° in 1933.
Stephens City’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pinnacle, about 2,850 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Martinsburg and Oranda Formations (shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
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.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 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 Stephens City reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stephens Run, Crooked Run, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 240 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stephens City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stephens City has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Stephens City normally reaches 57° and falls to 32°. The record high is 76°, in 1958; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.39 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Winchester 7 SE, 4 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
