The Cerro Gordo 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.
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5.39 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1954. The next wettest, 4.73 inches, fell in 2020.
Cerro Gordo’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Yorktown Formation and Duplin Formation, Undivided (clay), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 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 Cerro Gordo reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Uncles Branch, the Cerro Gordo, Porter Swamp, Cow Branch, the Lumber, the Little Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 120 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Little Pee Dee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cerro Gordo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cerro Gordo has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Cerro Gordo normally reaches 66° and falls to 40°. The record high is 82°, in 1959; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Whiteville 7 NW, 10 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
