The Banner Elk 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.70 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 1926.
Banner Elk’s center stands about 3,820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,420 ft to 5,220 ft, a difference of 1,800 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Roan High Knob, about 6,280 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Grandfather Mountain Formation; Meta-arkose (metasandstone), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metadiabase, greenstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 950 to 1,250 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 680 to 710 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 8 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Banner Elk reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shawneehaw Creek, the Elk River, the Watauga, the South Fork Holston, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Banner Elk; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Banner Elk has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Banner Elk normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Banner Elk, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
