The Birmingham 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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18° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 19° in 1940.
Birmingham’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Double Oak Mountain, about 1,480 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, chert. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Birmingham reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Valley Creek, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 440 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 Birmingham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Birmingham has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Birmingham normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 4.43 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Birmingham Area threaded record (Birmingham Airport, 5 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
