The West Columbia 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1924. Next is 72° in 1931.
West Columbia’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 340 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cape Fear/Eutaw Formations (sand, gravel), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, metasandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 West Columbia reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saluda, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
70 miles of the trip are on the Santee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Columbia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Columbia has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 74 inches of water.
On November 14 West Columbia normally reaches 55° and falls to 38°. The record high is 72°, in 1931; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.40 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1924 from the Caesars Head Area threaded record (Columbia Metropolitan Airport, 4 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
