The Erwin 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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82° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 81° in 2001.
Erwin’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 230 ft, a difference of 160 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 4 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.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 Erwin reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Cape Fear: about 160 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Erwin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Erwin has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Lillington, 10 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
