The Hartsville 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.
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 2012.
Hartsville’s center stands about 1,500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 2,370 ft, a difference of 1,020 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackson Hill, about 2,440 ft, 8 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Machias Formation (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million 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.
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 Hartsville reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Fall Creek, Bennetts Creek, the Tioga, the Chemung and the Susquehanna: about 380 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
250 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hartsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hartsville has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 82 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Hartsville normally reaches 47° and falls to 27°. The record high is 67°, in 1994; the record low 7°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 1.91 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Alfred, 4 miles west-northwest, 420 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.