The Rockwell 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
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83° on Nov. 16, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 81° in 1912.
Rockwell’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Rock Mountain, about 1,200 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metavolcanic Rock, from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metadacite, metarhyolite, metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 385 to 415 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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. 2 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 Rockwell reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Second Creek, the Yadkin, the Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 270 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 Rockwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockwell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Rockwell normally reaches 61° and falls to 37°. The record high is 80°, in 2007; the record low 15°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.67 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Salisbury, 10 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
