The Cleveland 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.
82° on Nov. 15, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 2005.
Cleveland’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wornock Mountain, about 1,430 ft, 7 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (lower part) (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Cleveland reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, the Locust 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 Cleveland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cleveland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cleveland normally reaches 65° and falls to 41°. The record high is 79°, in 1959; the record low 17°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Oneonta, 10 miles east-southeast, 560 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.