The Decatur 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 19° in 2013.
Decatur’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burleson Mountain, about 920 ft, 7 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuscumbia Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 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 Decatur reaches the Gulf of America by way of Guntersville Lake, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,330 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Decatur; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Decatur has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Decatur Pryor Field, 4 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
