The Sanford 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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90° on Nov. 13, 2015, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 89° in 1957.
Sanford’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 80 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated sediments (sand, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, limestone. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 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 Sanford reaches the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mills Creek, Blue Creek and Trout Creek: about 170 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 Sanford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sanford has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 49° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sanford normally reaches 78° and falls to 59°. The record high is 88°, in 2018; the record low 38°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Sanford, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
