The Laurel Hill 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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3.60 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1946. The next wettest, 3.51 inches, fell in 2009.
Laurel Hill’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently 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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 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.
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 Laurel Hill reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Lower Beaverdam Creek, Gum Swamp Creek, the Little Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 170 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Little Pee Dee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Laurel Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurel Hill has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Laurel Hill normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 1989; the record low 24°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.61 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Laurinburg, 6 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
