The Pelzer 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
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
18° on Nov. 11, 1913, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1884. Next is 18° in 1933.
Pelzer’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gneissic granite of Starr, from the Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 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 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 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, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. 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 Pelzer reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saluda, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 300 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lib Pines Lake and Lake Murray.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pelzer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pelzer has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pelzer normally reaches 64° and falls to 44°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 20°, in 1906. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1884 at Greenville Downtown Airport, 16 miles north-northeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
