The Faison 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.
5.60 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1971. The next wettest, 4.01 inches, fell in 2009.
Faison’s center stands about 170 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 Black Creek Formation (clay, sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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, sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 Faison reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Reedy Branch, Goshen Swamp, the Northeast Cape Fear and the Cape Fear: about 150 river miles.
110 miles of the trip are on the Northeast Cape Fear.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Faison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Faison has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Faison normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 79°, in 1993; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Clinton 2 NE, 10 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.