The North Topsail 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
19° on Nov. 17, 2011, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 23° in 1967.
North Topsail Beach’s center stands barely above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 60 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country. 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.
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.
Limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.6 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.
North Topsail Beach has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 North Topsail Beach normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 83°, in 1985; the record low 24°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at New River Mcaf, 15 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
