The Beech Mountain 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
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Sunny
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Mostly sunny
5.03 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1991. The next wettest, 3.22 inches, fell in 2009.
Beech Mountain’s center stands about 4,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,840 ft to 5,220 ft, a difference of 2,380 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Grassy Ridge Bald, about 6,180 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metamorphosed Granitic Rock (metagranite), from the Neoproterozoic, 680 to 710 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 680 to 710 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 950 to 1,250 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Beech Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Grassy Gap Creek, Beech Creek, the Watauga, the South Fork Holston, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,870 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 Beech Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Beech Mountain has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 69° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 66 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Beech Mountain normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 77°, in 2003; the record low 9°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.91 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Beech Mountain, here, 660 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
