The Fair Play 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
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1908. The next wettest, 5.10 inches, fell in 1957.
Fair Play’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Migmatitic granitoid gneiss, from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Fair Play reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Tugaloo and the Savannah: about 300 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fair Play; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fair Play has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fair Play normally reaches 63° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1924; the record low 25°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 1.08 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Hartwell, 11 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
