Regions of Delaware

This is the only part of Delaware that is not coastal plain: the Fall Line runs through Wilmington, and the Piedmont hills north of it take a different forecast from the tidewater a mile south — measurably more snow, and the rain-snow line often sits right on the city. The Twelve-Mile Circle above it is the only circular state boundary in the country, and it carries Delaware's territory to the New Jersey shore of the river.

Kent is the flattest, quietest third of the state and the one that decides its winters: the rain-snow line on a coastal storm usually falls somewhere between Smyrna and Harrington, which is why Dover can get four inches while Wilmington gets a foot and Georgetown gets rain. Dover Air Force Base flies the largest airlift aircraft in the inventory out of it in any weather.

Sussex is bigger than the other two counties together and it is where Delaware's weather actually happens. The nor'easters come up the coast and push water into the inland bays; the Delaware Bay beaches north of Lewes are the largest horseshoe crab spawning ground on earth and the reason a quarter million shorebirds stop here every May; and the inland half is the top broiler-chicken county in the United States, where a summer heat wave is a livestock emergency.