The Charlotte 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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5.00 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1878. The next wettest, 3.01 inches, fell in 1940.
Charlotte’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic Rock, from the Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metagabbro, metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagranite, metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metagabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.3 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 Charlotte reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Little Sugar Creek, Sugar Creek, the Catawba, the Wateree, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 290 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
90 miles of the trip are on the Wateree.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charlotte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charlotte has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Charlotte normally reaches 63° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 1879; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.23 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1878 from the Charlotte Area threaded record (Charlotte Douglas Airport, 6 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
