The Williamsburg 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 sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
5.53 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 4.32 inches, fell in 1979.
Williamsburg’s center stands about 90 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 140 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Windsor Formation (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old.
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.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Williamsburg reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of College Creek and the James: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Williamsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Williamsburg has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Williamsburg normally reaches 62° and falls to 41°. The record high is 80°, in 1993; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Williamsburg 2 N, 2 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
