The Pelion 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
Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny
16° on Nov. 14, 2013, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1947. Next is 17° in 1969.
Pelion’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 510 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Huber/Lisbon/Barnwell Formations, undivided (clay, sand), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 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.
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 Pelion reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Lynch Branch, Cedar Creek, the North Fork Edisto, the Edisto and the North Edisto: about 190 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Edisto.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pelion; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pelion has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pelion normally reaches 69° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.32 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Pelion 0.8 NW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
