The Grandfather 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.70 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 1926.
Grandfather Village’s center stands about 3,800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 5,570 ft, a difference of 2,420 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Grassy Ridge Bald, about 6,180 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Grandfather Mountain Formation; Metasiltstone, from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 950 to 1,250 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 1 to 1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. 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. 5 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 Grandfather Village reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Linville, the Catawba, the Wateree, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 460 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lib Pines Lake, Lake Norman and Lake James.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Grandfather Village; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Grandfather Village has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 54 inches of water.
On November 14 Grandfather Village normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 73°, in 1994; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Banner Elk, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
