The Saluda 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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4.49 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1954. The next wettest, 2.59 inches, fell in 1979.
Saluda’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Windsor Formation (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 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 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. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Saluda reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Dragon Swamp and the Piankatank: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Saluda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saluda has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Saluda normally reaches 62° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at West Point 2 NW, 12 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
