The Wilmington Island 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
86° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 85° in 1955.
Wilmington Island’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silver Bluff shoreline complex (sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Wilmington Island reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Beard Creek and the Halfmoon: about 3 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wilmington Island; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wilmington Island has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wilmington Island normally reaches 70° and falls to 48°. The record high is 83°, in 1993; the record low 28°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Savannah Hunter Field, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
