The Wake Forest 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
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4.36 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1887. The next wettest, 3.93 inches, fell in 1920.
Wake Forest’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 58×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 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. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 265 to 325 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Wake Forest reaches Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Smith Creek and the Neuse: about 230 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wake Forest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wake Forest has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Wake Forest normally reaches 63° and falls to 40°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 20°, in 1977. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1887 from the Raleigh Area threaded record (Raleigh-Durham International Airport, 16 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
