The Raiford 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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5.46 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1919. The next wettest, 2.99 inches, fell in 2019.
Raiford’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 190 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated sediments (sand, clay), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 9 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 Raiford reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the New River, the Santa Fe and the Suwannee: about 140 river miles.
65 miles of the trip are on the Suwannee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Raiford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Raiford has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Raiford normally reaches 75° and falls to 49°. The record high is 85°, in 2018; the record low 27°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 2.57 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Glen St Mary 1 W, 15 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
