The Gatesville 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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7.56 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1973. The next wettest, 5.55 inches, fell in 2009.
Gatesville’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 70 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 19 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Gatesville reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bennetts Creek and the Chowan: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gatesville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gatesville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Gatesville normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 79°, in 2022; the record low 21°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.12 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Murfreesboro, 18 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
