The Durham 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
77° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 74° in 1973.
Durham’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gaffney Hill, about 1,040 ft, 4 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hornblende gneiss (hornblende-gneiss), from the Precambrian.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Durham reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cooks Creek and the Delaware: about 140 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Durham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Durham has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Durham normally reaches 54° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1993; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.41 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 from the Allentown Area threaded record (Allentown Lehigh Valley International Airport, 13 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
