The Piedmont 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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18° on Nov. 11, 1913, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1884. Next is 18° in 1933.
Piedmont’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Arial Mountain, about 1,380 ft, 14 miles northwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 2 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 Piedmont reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Big Brushy Creek, the Saluda, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 310 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lib Pines Lake and Lake Murray.
80 miles of the trip are on the Saluda.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Piedmont; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Piedmont 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 Piedmont 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, 12 miles northeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
