The Holden Beach 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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4.34 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1972. The next wettest, 3.64 inches, fell in 2009.
Holden Beach’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
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: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Holden Beach runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Holden Beach; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holden Beach has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Holden Beach normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 81°, in 1985; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 2016.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Longwood, 15 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
