The Fairplay 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.84 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 2009.
Fairplay’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is William Mountain, about 1,410 ft, 7 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mica Schist/ Gneiss (mica-schist, gneiss), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 6 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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. 7 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 Fairplay reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hurricane Creek, the Chattahoochee and the Apalachicola: about 380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Walter F George Reservoir, West Point Lake and Bartletts Ferry Lake.
110 miles of the trip are on the Apalachicola.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairplay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairplay has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairplay normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.71 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Carrollton, 13 miles west, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
