The Spring 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.
3.00 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 2.83 inches, fell in 1920.
Spring Lake’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hominy Hills, about 300 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Member of the Kirkwood Formation (clay, sand), from the Early Miocene, 16 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Clay, sand. Age: Early Miocene, 16 to 23 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 14 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Middle Paleocene, 59 to 62 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 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.
Rain that falls on Spring Lake runs straight into the Atlantic Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spring Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spring Lake has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Spring Lake normally reaches 56° and falls to 38°. The record high is 72°, in 1973; the record low 18°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.24 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Long Branch-Oakhurst, 10 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.