The Elm City 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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7.27 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1916. The next wettest, 3.42 inches, fell in 2009.
Elm City’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 190 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.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
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 21 mi of the line.
Slate, argillite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.5 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 Elm City reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cattail Swamp, Town Creek, the Tar and the Pamlico: about 110 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elm City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elm City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Elm City normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1951; the record low 21°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Wilson 3 SW, 9 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
