The Athens 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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17° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 20° in 1997.
Athens’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 780 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Capshaw Mountain, about 1,280 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fort Payne Chert (limestone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 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 Athens reaches the Gulf of America by way of Swan Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,330 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Athens has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Athens normally reaches 63° and falls to 42°. The record high is 77°, in 2011; the record low 22°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Athens, 2 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
