The McConnells 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.
18° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 20° in 1933.
McConnells’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metamorphosed granite and granodiorite (metagranite, metadiorite), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagranite, metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metagabbro. Age: Neoproterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.6 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 McConnells reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Little Turkey Creek, Turkey Creek, the Broad, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 270 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
70 miles of the trip are on the Santee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McConnells; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McConnells has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 McConnells normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1931; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Winthrop University, 12 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.