The Bethune 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.
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86° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1933. Next is 85° in 1955.
Bethune’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is King Sand Hills, about 590 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Peedee Formation - Black Creek Group, undivided (clay, sand), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 1 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 Bethune reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Lynches, Clark Creek, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 180 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Lynches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethune; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethune has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bethune normally reaches 67° and falls to 40°. The record high is 81°, in 1989; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.98 in, fell in 2016.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1933 at Bishopville 1.4 ENE, 15 miles south-southeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
