The Drakes Branch 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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3.62 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1947. The next wettest, 3.20 inches, fell in 1979.
Drakes Branch’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baker Mountain, about 760 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Migmatitic Paragneiss, from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Paragneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.3 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 Drakes Branch reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Twittys Creek, Roanoke Creek and the Roanoke: about 230 river miles.
Lake on the way: Roanoke Rapids Lake.
130 miles of the trip are on the Roanoke.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Drakes Branch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Drakes Branch has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° 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 Drakes Branch normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 78°, in 1989; the record low 18°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Chase City, 16 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
