The Cheraw 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.
3.38 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.23 inches, fell in 2018.
Cheraw’s center stands about 160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 210 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brandywine Formation (gravel, sand), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 59×. 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, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metarhyolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Cheraw reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Huckleberry Branch, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 170 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cheraw; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cheraw has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cheraw normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1964; the record low 20°, in 1977. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Cheraw, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.