The Mills River 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
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78° on Nov. 16, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1869. Next is 78° in 1958.
Mills River’s center stands about 2,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,050 ft to 2,690 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Pisgah, about 5,680 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ashe Metamorphic Suite and Tallulah Falls Formation; Metagraywacke (metagraywacke, mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Silurian, 438 to 439 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Middle Devonian, 390 to 391 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllonite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 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 Mills River reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sweetwater Branch, Boylston Creek, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mills River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mills River has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Mills River normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1869 from the Asheville Area threaded record (Asheville Regional Airport, 3 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
