The Clay 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.
Clay’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Rock Mountain, about 1,550 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chepultepec and Copper Ridge Dolomites undifferentiated (dolostone, limestone), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, 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 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 10 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 Clay reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, the Locust Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 470 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 Clay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clay 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 Clay 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, 13 miles southwest, 350 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
