The Mount Gilead 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
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1911. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 2009.
Mount Gilead’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 500 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shingle Trap Mountain, about 940 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tillery Formation; Metamudstone and Meta-Argillite (slate, argillite), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metadacite, metarhyolite, metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.5 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 Mount Gilead reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Hamer Creek, the Little River, the Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 210 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Great Pee Dee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mount Gilead; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mount Gilead has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mount Gilead normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1931; the record low 16°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Albemarle, 17 miles northwest, 190 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
