The North Star 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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80° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 78° in 1973.
North Star’s center stands about 370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wissahickon Schist (schist, gneiss), from the Paleozoic, 252 to 542 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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, silt. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Paleozoic, 252 to 542 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.
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 North Star reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pike Creek, White Clay Creek, the Christina and the Delaware: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Star; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Star has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 North Star normally reaches 56° and falls to 38°. The record high is 76°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.42 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 from the Wilmington Area threaded record (Wilmington Airport, 9 miles southeast, 300 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
