The Raleigh 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
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4.73 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 4.51 inches, fell in 2009.
Raleigh’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Adam Mountain, about 500 ft, 12 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Injected Gneiss (gneiss, biotite-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granitic. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Permian, 270 to 320 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss, biotite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 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.
Metasedimentary. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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. 2 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 Raleigh reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Crabtree Creek and the Neuse: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Raleigh; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Raleigh has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Raleigh normally reaches 62° and falls to 41°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.67 in, fell in 2018.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 at Raleigh State University, 4 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
