The Petersburg 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
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80° on Nov. 12, 2006, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1994. Next is 77° in 2011.
Petersburg’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,970 ft, a difference of 1,060 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blackbird Knob, about 3,970 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 18 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 12 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 Petersburg reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Branch Potomac and the Potomac: about 360 river miles.
290 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Petersburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Petersburg has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1994 at Petersburg, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
