The Durham 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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Showers likely
81° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 77° in 1989.
Durham’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Durham reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cottonwood, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Marion Reservoir, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Durham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Durham has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Durham normally reaches 56° and falls to 35°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Marion Reservoir, 11 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
