The Florala 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.
86° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 85° in 2008.
Florala’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene Series undifferentiated (sand, clay), from the Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 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.
Sand, clay. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 0.6 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 Florala reaches Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Corner Creek, Flat Creek, the Pea and the Choctawhatchee: about 130 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Choctawhatchee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Florala; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Florala has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 64 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Florala normally reaches 72° and falls to 44°. The record high is 85°, in 2008; the record low 27°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.08 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Crestview Faa/Ap, 19 miles southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.