The Barbecue 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
82° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 81° in 2001.
Barbecue’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cameron Hill, about 510 ft, 5 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middendorf Formation (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 53×. 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: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.3 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 Barbecue reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Kiln Branch, Barbecue Creek, the Upper Little and the Cape Fear: about 200 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Cape Fear.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Barbecue; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Barbecue has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Lillington, 13 miles east-northeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
