The Black 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
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78° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1869. Next is 78° in 1958.
Black Mountain’s center stands about 2,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,250 ft to 3,980 ft, a difference of 1,730 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Mitchell, about 6,660 ft, 11 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashe Metamorphic Suite and Tallulah Falls Formation; Metagraywacke (metagraywacke, mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Silurian, 438 to 439 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllonite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 Black Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tomahawk Branch, the Swannanoa, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 Black Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Black Mountain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Black Mountain normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1869 from the Asheville Area threaded record (Asheville Regional Airport, 17 miles southwest, 270 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
