The South Bethany 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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3.84 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1945. The next wettest, 3.41 inches, fell in 2020.
South Bethany’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from -10 ft to 80 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chesapeake Group (silt), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old.
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.
Silt. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 12 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.
Rain that falls on South Bethany runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of South Bethany; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Bethany has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 South Bethany normally reaches 59° and falls to 40°. The record high is 76°, in 1959; the record low 21°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 from the Georgetown Area threaded record (Georgetown-Delaware Coastal Airport, 20 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
