The Tappahannock 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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4.56 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.47 inches, fell in 2020.
Tappahannock’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Smith Mount Hill, about 240 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 64×. 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. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 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.
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 Tappahannock reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Hoskins Creek and the Rappahannock: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tappahannock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tappahannock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Tappahannock normally reaches 60° and falls to 39°. The record high is 82°, in 1941; the record low 16°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Warsaw 2 NW, 6 miles northeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
