The Berea 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
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
18° on Nov. 11, 1913, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1884. Next is 18° in 1933.
Berea’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Paris Mountain, about 2,040 ft, 5 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sillimanite schist and sillimanite-mica schist (mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 4 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 Berea reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Long Branch, the Reedy, the Saluda, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 330 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lib Pines Lake and Lake Murray.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Berea; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Berea has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Berea normally reaches 64° and falls to 44°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 20°, in 1906. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1884 at Greenville Downtown Airport, 7 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
