The Christmas 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
8.04 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1901. The next wettest, 4.67 inches, fell in 2001.
Christmas’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 20 ft to 90 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beach ridge and dune (sand, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Christmas reaches the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Monroe, Lake, Blue Creek and Trout Creek: about 220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: George, Lake and Monroe, Lake.
100 miles of the trip are on Trout Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Christmas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Christmas has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Christmas normally reaches 76° and falls to 61°. The record high is 88°, in 1970; the record low 37°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 2.90 in, fell in 1941.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Titusville, 14 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
