The Bristol 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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3.35 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1938. The next wettest, 2.51 inches, fell in 1947.
Bristol’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 200 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleistocene-Pliocene sands and gravels (sand, gravel), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Bristol reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Crooked Creek, Fishing Creek, Big Satilla Creek, Satilla Creek and the Satilla: about 130 river miles.
95 miles of the trip are on the Satilla.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bristol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bristol has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bristol normally reaches 72° and falls to 46°. The record high is 85°, in 1993; the record low 27°, in 1984. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Alma Bacon County Airport, 18 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
