The Charleston 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
84° on Nov. 15, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 84° in 1989.
Charleston’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 40 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
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 4 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.
Sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Charleston reaches Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ashley: about 5 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Charleston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Charleston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Charleston normally reaches 67° and falls to 53°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 36°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 2.56 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Downtown Charleston, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
