The Swannanoa 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
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
12° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1876. Next is 13° in 1911.
Swannanoa’s center stands about 2,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,130 ft to 4,220 ft, a difference of 2,090 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Mitchell, about 6,660 ft, 14 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 5 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 19 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllonite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metadunite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 0.3 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 Swannanoa reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Swannanoa, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 Swannanoa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Swannanoa has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Swannanoa normally reaches 59° and falls to 37°. The record high is 74°, in 1993; the record low 15°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 0.99 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1876 at Asheville, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
