The Cardiff 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.
Cardiff’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ruffner Mountain, about 1,250 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (upper part) (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.3 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 Cardiff reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Fivemile Creek, Cow Branch, the Locust Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 430 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 Cardiff; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cardiff 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 Cardiff 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, 12 miles east-southeast, 210 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
