The Matthews 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
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.38 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 2.73 inches, fell in 2002.
Matthews’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Twiggs Clay, from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
Clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous to Tertiary, 2.6 to 145 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.
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 Matthews reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Reedy Creek, Brier Creek and the Savannah: about 190 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Savannah.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Matthews; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Matthews has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Matthews normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.84 in, fell in 1898.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Louisville 1 E, 15 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
