The Lake Secession 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.
Lake Secession’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Mountain, about 900 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite-plagioclase-quartz gneiss and biotite-muscovite schist (biotite-gneiss, 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 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Phyllonite, schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 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 Lake Secession reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Rocky and the Savannah: about 280 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Secession; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Secession 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 Lake Secession 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, 13 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.