The Roper 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.
Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
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8.63 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1945. The next wettest, 3.94 inches, fell in 2020.
Roper’s center stands about 14 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 50 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 2 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, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 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 Roper reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Creek and Mackeys Creek: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Roper; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Roper has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Roper normally reaches 65° and falls to 42°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 20°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 2.40 in, fell in 1945.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Plymouth 5 E, 2 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
