The Faunsdale 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.
18° on Nov. 11, 2025, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 19° in 1969.
Faunsdale’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 290 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Selma Group; Demopolis Chalk, from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 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.
Chalk. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Chalk, marl. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, sandstone. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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.
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 Faunsdale reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Cottonwood Creek, Big Prairie Creek, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 260 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 Faunsdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Faunsdale has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Faunsdale normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 24°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 2.05 in, fell in 1930.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Greensboro, 16 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.