The Mountain Road 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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Partly cloudy
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3.85 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1971. The next wettest, 3.85 inches, fell in 2020.
Mountain Road’s center stands about 540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
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 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, gneiss. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite, gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 0.7 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 Mountain Road reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mikes Creek, the Dan 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 Mountain Road; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mountain Road has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Mountain Road normally reaches 63° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1985; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at South Boston, 7 miles southeast, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
