The Fayetteville 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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87° on Nov. 14, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 84° in 1958.
Fayetteville’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crumplers Peak, about 1,280 ft, 6 miles northeast.
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 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Slate, metasiltstone. Age: Precambrian to Cambrian. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, slate, quartzite. Age: Precambrian to Cambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Chert, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Fayetteville reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Lay Lake, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 430 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lay Lake.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fayetteville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fayetteville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Fayetteville normally reaches 65° and falls to 39°. The record high is 87°, in 2024; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Sylacauga 4 NE, 15 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
