The Beech Island 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.
21° on Nov. 14, 2013, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 22° in 1969.
Beech Island’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Poverty Hill, about 430 ft, 12 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Black Creek/Cusseta/Blufftown Formations (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous to Tertiary, 2.6 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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 Beech Island reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Savannah: about 190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Beech Island; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Beech Island has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Beech Island normally reaches 70° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1993; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 3.33 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Augusta Area threaded record (Augusta Bush Field Airport, 6 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.