The Auburn 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.
23° on Nov. 12, 2011, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 24° in 2019.
Auburn’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pine Mountain Group; Manchester Schist (muscovite-schist, quartzite), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 38×. 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, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 7 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 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 Auburn reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Parkerson Mill Creek, Chewacla Creek, Uphapee Creek, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 450 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Auburn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Auburn has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Auburn No.2, here, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.