The Fairhope 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
92° on Nov. 14, 1945, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 89° in 1946.
Fairhope’s center stands about 130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Citronelle Formation (sand), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 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.
Sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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.
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 Fairhope reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Cowpen Creek and the Fish: about 13 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairhope; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairhope has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 69 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairhope normally reaches 71° and falls to 44°. The record high is 92°, in 1945; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.40 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Fairhope 2 NE, 2 miles northeast, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
