The Axis 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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20° on Nov. 14, 1963, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1913. Next is 25° in 1969.
Axis’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 200 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Rock, about 270 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial, coastal and low terrace deposits (sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 5 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 Axis reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Mobile: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Axis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Axis has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 72 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Axis normally reaches 70° and falls to 49°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 5.70 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1913 at Bay Minette, 15 miles east-southeast, 220 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
