The Rockingham 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
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
3.75 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 2.89 inches, fell in 2020.
Rockingham’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 390 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ingram Mountain, about 560 ft, 11 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Phyllite and Schist (phyllite, schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. 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. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 265 to 325 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian, 314 to 315 million years old. About 0.7 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 Rockingham reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Falling Creek, Hitchcock Creek, the Pee Dee, the Great Pee Dee, Schooner Creek and the Waccamaw: about 190 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Great Pee Dee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockingham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockingham has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rockingham normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.51 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Hamlet, 6 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
