The Washington 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
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
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.
Washington’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 1,890 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Man, about 4,000 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Flint Hill Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 7×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granulite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Washington reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Rush, 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 Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington 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 Washington 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, 5 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
