The Pilot Mountain 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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3.50 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.14 inches, fell in 2006.
Pilot Mountain’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,710 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moores Knob, about 2,540 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic Gneiss, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Ordovician, 455 to 540 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Pilot Mountain reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Heatherly Creek, Toms Creek, the Ararat, the Yadkin, the Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 360 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Tillery.
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 Pilot Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pilot Mountain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Pilot Mountain normally reaches 60° and falls to 33°. The record high is 77°, in 2003; the record low 11°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 2.05 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Mount Airy 2 W, 13 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
