The Broadway 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.
4.69 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1972. The next wettest, 4.30 inches, fell in 2018.
Broadway’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
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 6 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 13 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 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 Broadway reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Upper Little and the Cape Fear: about 210 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 Broadway; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Broadway has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Broadway normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1977. The most rain on this date, 1.16 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Sanford 8 NE, 5 miles north, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.