The Lake Waccamaw 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
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Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
5.39 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1954. The next wettest, 4.73 inches, fell in 2020.
Lake Waccamaw’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 120 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Waccamaw Formation (sand), 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.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 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 Lake Waccamaw reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Waccamaw, Lake and the Waccamaw: about 140 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waccamaw, Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Waccamaw; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Waccamaw has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Lake Waccamaw normally reaches 66° and falls to 40°. The record high is 82°, in 1959; the record low 22°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Whiteville 7 NW, 18 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
