The Bethel 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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7.15 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1870. The next wettest, 6.70 inches, fell in 2009.
Bethel’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 130 ft, a difference of 90 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.
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 24 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 Bethel reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Conetoe Creek, the Tar and the Pamlico: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethel has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 5 inches of snow.
On November 14 Bethel normally reaches 64° and falls to 40°. The record high is 82°, in 1924; the record low 17°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1873.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1870 at Tarboro 1 S, 11 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
