The Cary 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 sunny
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Partly cloudy
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Chance of showers
2° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 3° in 2005.
Cary’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Saddle Mound, about 1,360 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.9 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Cary reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rocky Run, the East Fork Black, the Black River, the Dodge Chute and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cary; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cary has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cary normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.25 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Marshfield Municipal Airport, 13 miles north-northeast, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
