The Ninety Six 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.
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4.24 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 3.90 inches, fell in 1940.
Ninety Six’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite quartz-plagioclase gneiss (biotite-gneiss), from the Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Devonian, 359 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Middle Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 521 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 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 Ninety Six reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Kate Fowler Branch, Ninety Six Creek, the Saluda, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 250 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lib Pines Lake and Lake Murray.
70 miles of the trip are on the Santee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ninety Six; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ninety Six has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ninety Six normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 86°, in 1931; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Saluda, 19 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
