The Cornelius 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.
Cornelius’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anderson Mountain, about 1,570 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metamorphosed Quartz Diorite (metadiorite), from the Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 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 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.
Metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.7 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 Cornelius reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of McDowell Creek, the Catawba, the Wateree, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 320 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 Cornelius; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cornelius 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 Cornelius 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, 19 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
