The Bluffton 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 85° in 1946.
Bluffton’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 100 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chenier plain and deltas of Suwannee & Chattahoochie Rivers (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Bluffton reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the May and Mackay Creek: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bluffton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bluffton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bluffton normally reaches 70° and falls to 48°. The record high is 83°, in 1993; the record low 28°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Savannah Area threaded record (Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, 17 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
