The Wytheville 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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78° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 1955.
Wytheville’s center stands about 2,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,080 ft to 2,940 ft, a difference of 860 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Bend, about 3,960 ft, 7 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beekmantown Group (dolostone, limestone), 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.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 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.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 Wytheville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Reed Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lake on the way: Claytor Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wytheville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wytheville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Wytheville normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wytheville, here, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
