The Ayden 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.98 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1875. The next wettest, 5.18 inches, fell in 2020.
Ayden’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Yorktown Formation and Duplin Formation, Undivided (clay), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 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 Ayden reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Swift Creek and the Neuse: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ayden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ayden has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Ayden normally reaches 65° and falls to 41°. The record high is 82°, in 1993; the record low 23°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.79 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1875 at Greenville, 12 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
