The Carthage 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.93 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1952. The next wettest, 4.58 inches, fell in 2020.
Carthage’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Carthage reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Dunhams Creek, Crane Creek, the Little River and the Cape Fear: about 220 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 Carthage; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carthage has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Carthage normally reaches 63° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 1964; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Jackson Springs 5 WNW, 18 miles southwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
