The St. Stephen 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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4.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 2.58 inches, fell in 2022.
St. Stephen’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waccamaw Formation (limestone, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 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.
Limestone, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Peat. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 St. Stephen reaches Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Walker Swamp, Gravel Hill Swamp, Wadboo Creek, the West Branch Cooper and the Cooper: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of St. Stephen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
St. Stephen has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 St. Stephen normally reaches 69° and falls to 47°. The record high is 76°, in 2007; the record low 26°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Moncks Corner 4 N, 12 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
