The Charlotte 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
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Chance of showers
−4° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −2° in 2019.
Charlotte’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hopkinton, Blanding, Tete Des Morts, Mosalem formations (dolostone), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 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.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.5 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 Charlotte reaches the Gulf of America by way of Deep Creek, the Maquoketa and the Mississippi: about 1,550 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlotte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlotte has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Charlotte normally reaches 48° and falls to 31°. The record high is 74°, in 1971; the record low 2°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.14 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Clinton No 1, 16 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
