The Belhaven 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.
6.64 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1973. The next wettest, 6.02 inches, fell in 2020.
Belhaven’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 40 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Surficial Deposits, Undivided (sand, clay, gravel), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
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, clay, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 20 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 Belhaven reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pantego Creek, the Pungo and the Pamlico: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belhaven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belhaven has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belhaven normally reaches 64° and falls to 48°. The record high is 78°, in 1989; the record low 27°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Gaylord Bay, 9 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.