The Asheville 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1869. Next is 78° in 1958.
Asheville’s center stands about 2,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,970 ft to 3,080 ft, a difference of 1,110 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Craggy Dome, about 6,030 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashe Metamorphic Suite and Tallulah Falls Formation; Muscovite-biotite gneiss (gneiss, mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 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 Asheville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Swannanoa, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Asheville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Asheville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Asheville normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 15°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1876 at Asheville, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
