The Buncombe 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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6.62 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 3.32 inches, fell in 1957.
Buncombe’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jims Hill, about 770 ft, 5 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Pope Group (Tar Springs Sandstone through Kinkaid Limestone) (limestone, sandstone, shale), from the Late Mississippian, 324 to 331 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Late Mississippian, 324 to 331 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian, 315 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 0.4 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 Buncombe reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dutchman Creek, the Post Creek Cutoff, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,020 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Buncombe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buncombe has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Buncombe normally reaches 60° and falls to 37°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.04 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Anna 4 N, 15 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
