The High Shoals 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Mostly sunny
5.48 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1952. The next wettest, 3.24 inches, fell in 2009.
High Shoals’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anderson Mountain, about 1,570 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Blacksburg Formation (mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Mississippian, 351 to 352 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 High Shoals reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Fork Catawba, the Catawba, the Wateree, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 310 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 High Shoals; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
High Shoals has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 High Shoals normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Lincolnton 4 W, 8 miles west-northwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
