The Bradley 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.
4.34 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1899. The next wettest, 3.01 inches, fell in 1940.
Bradley’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Parsons Mountain, about 840 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
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 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 1,000 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.4 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 Bradley reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Chiles Branch, Hard Labor Creek, Stevens Creek and the Savannah: about 260 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Savannah.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bradley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bradley has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bradley normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1924; the record low 21°, in 1984. The most rain on this date, 1.66 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Calhoun Falls, 20 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.