The Sumter 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
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.33 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1901. The next wettest, 2.85 inches, fell in 1979.
Sumter’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 200 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Duplin Formation (sand, clay), from the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Sand, limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Sumter reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Green Swamp, the Pocotaligo and the Black River: about 150 river miles.
110 miles of the trip are on the Black River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sumter; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sumter has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sumter normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1989; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Sumter, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
