The Ridge Spring 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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3.36 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 3.30 inches, fell in 2008.
Ridge Spring’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Black Creek/Cusseta/Blufftown Formations (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, metasandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Middle Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 521 million years old. About 1 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 Ridge Spring reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Flat Rock Creek, the South Fork Edisto, the Edisto and the North Edisto: about 210 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 Ridge Spring; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ridge Spring has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Ridge Spring normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 85°, in 1909; the record low 25°, in 1906. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Batesburg, 8 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
