The Rockbridge 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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72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 70° in 1971.
Rockbridge’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spring Hill, about 1,220 ft, 4 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 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 Rockbridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pine River, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,690 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockbridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockbridge has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rockbridge normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Lone Rock Tri County Airport, 19 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
