The Woodlake 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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5.05 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 2.76 inches, fell in 1902.
Woodlake’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Newark Supergroup; Triassic Sandstone, Siltstone, and Shale (shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 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. 3 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 Woodlake reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Dry Creek, Swift Creek, the Appomattox and the James: about 110 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Woodlake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Woodlake has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Woodlake normally reaches 61° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 18°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.12 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Richmond Area threaded record (Richmond International Airport, 20 miles east-northeast, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
