The Chimney Rock Village 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.
78° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1869. Next is 78° in 1958.
Chimney Rock Village’s center stands about 2,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 3,470 ft, a difference of 2,450 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Pisgah Mountain, about 4,390 ft, 6 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Henderson Gneiss, from the Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Silurian, 438 to 439 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Chimney Rock Village reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Broad, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 350 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
160 miles of the trip are on the Broad.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chimney Rock Village; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chimney Rock Village 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 Chimney Rock Village 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, 16 miles west, 560 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.