The Holly Springs 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.
4.36 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 3.93 inches, fell in 1920.
Holly Springs’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Newark Supergroup, Chatham Group; Chatham Group, Undivided (conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone), from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss, biotite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Holly Springs reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Utley Creek, White Oak Creek and the Cape Fear: about 200 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Holly Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Holly Springs has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Holly Springs normally reaches 63° and falls to 40°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 20°, in 1977. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Raleigh Area threaded record (Raleigh-Durham International Airport, 17 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.