The Silver Lake 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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4.84 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1870. The next wettest, 4.73 inches, fell in 1937.
Silver Lake’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Castle Hayne Formation; Comfort Member and New Hanover Member, undivided (limestone), from the Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 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.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Silver Lake reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mott Creek and the Cape Fear: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Silver Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Silver Lake has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Silver Lake normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 82°, in 1993; the record low 26°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.95 in, fell in 1908.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1870 from the Wilmington Area threaded record (Wilmington Int'L Airport, 8 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
