The Five Points 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.
3.60 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1946. The next wettest, 3.51 inches, fell in 2009.
Five Points’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 510 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gaddys Mountain, about 550 ft, 12 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pinehurst Formation (sand), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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 17 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 7 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 Five Points reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Buffalo Creek, the Lumber, the Little Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 220 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Lumber.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Five Points; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Five Points has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Five Points normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 1989; the record low 24°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.61 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Laurinburg, 19 miles south-southwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.