The Spruce Pine 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; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
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.
Spruce Pine’s center stands about 2,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,530 ft to 3,880 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Craig, about 6,610 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alligator Back Formation; Gneiss, from the Neoproterozoic, 542 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 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.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Middle Devonian, 390 to 391 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 2 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 Spruce Pine reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Toe, the Nolichucky, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,870 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 Spruce Pine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spruce Pine 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 Spruce Pine 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, 9 miles southwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
