The Macon 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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85° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 84° in 1993.
Macon’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mica Schist (mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 265 to 325 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 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.
A raindrop that lands in Macon reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Sixpound Creek and the Roanoke: about 160 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roanoke Rapids Lake.
130 miles of the trip are on the Roanoke.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Macon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Macon has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Macon normally reaches 63° and falls to 39°. The record high is 78°, in 1964; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.64 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at John H Kerr Dam, 16 miles northwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
