The Montreat 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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7.16 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 3.55 inches, fell in 1987.
Montreat’s center stands about 2,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,130 ft to 4,920 ft, a difference of 2,790 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Mitchell, about 6,660 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
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 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.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllonite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 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 Montreat reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flat Creek, the Swannanoa, 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 Montreat; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Montreat has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 13 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 64 inches of water.
On November 14 Montreat normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1958; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.74 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Celo 2 S, 14 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
