The Belleplain 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 cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1965. Next is 78° in 2020.
Belleplain’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 80 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cohansey Formation (sand), from the Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 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. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 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.
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 Belleplain reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Savages Run and East Creek: about 6 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belleplain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belleplain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Belleplain normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 73°, in 1989; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.09 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1965 at Estell Manor, 8 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
