The Ellerbe 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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4.93 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1952. The next wettest, 4.58 inches, fell in 2020.
Ellerbe’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middendorf Formation (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 265 to 325 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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.
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 Ellerbe reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bells Creek, Rocky Fork Creek, Hitchcock Creek, the Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 200 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Great Pee Dee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ellerbe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ellerbe has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Ellerbe normally reaches 63° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 1964; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Jackson Springs 5 WNW, 9 miles north-northeast, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
