The Altamahaw 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
Sunny
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Mostly sunny
5.32 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1962. The next wettest, 3.08 inches, fell in 2020.
Altamahaw’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Creek Mountain, about 950 ft, 7 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metamorphosed Granitic Rock (metagranite), from the Neoproterozoic to Middle Cambrian, 520 to 650 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Cambrian, 520 to 650 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 265 to 325 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metagabbro, metadiorite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metadacite, metarhyolite, metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 Altamahaw reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Haw and the Cape Fear: about 250 river miles.
190 miles of the trip are on the Cape Fear.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Altamahaw; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Altamahaw has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Altamahaw normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 77°, in 1985; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.21 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Reidsville 2 NW, 17 miles northwest, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
