The Altoona 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; warmer
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82° on Nov. 15, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 2005.
Altoona’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chandler Mountain, about 1,500 ft, 8 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million 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. 3 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 Altoona reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Locust Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 530 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Altoona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Altoona has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Altoona normally reaches 65° and falls to 41°. The record high is 79°, in 1959; the record low 17°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Oneonta, 9 miles southwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
