The Blountsville 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.
86° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 84° in 1911.
Blountsville’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wornock Mountain, about 1,430 ft, 8 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuscumbia Limestone and Fort Payne Chert undivided, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Blountsville reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Blue Springs Creek, the Mulberry Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 490 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 Blountsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blountsville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Blountsville normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.85 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Saint Bernard, 14 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.