The Hatteras 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.
4.30 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1957. The next wettest, 4.18 inches, fell in 2018.
Hatteras’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 10 ft, a difference of 10 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Surficial Deposits, Undivided (sand, clay, gravel), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
Rain that falls on Hatteras runs straight into Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hatteras; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hatteras has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hatteras normally reaches 66° and falls to 52°. The record high is 79°, in 1989; the record low 26°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.67 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Cape Hatteras - Billy Mitchell Field, 4 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.