The Cowpens 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
Sunny; warmer
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Mostly sunny
3.09 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1983. The next wettest, 2.79 inches, fell in 2018.
Cowpens’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thicketty Mountain, about 1,260 ft, 7 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sillimanite-mica schist and muscovite-biotite schist (mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cowpens reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Pacolet, the Broad, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 290 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
75 miles of the trip are on the Broad.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cowpens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cowpens has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cowpens normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 79°, in 2007; the record low 19°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1983 at Spartanburg 3 SSE, 10 miles southwest, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
