The Fort Payne 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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10° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 12° in 1940.
Fort Payne’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,650 ft, a difference of 840 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Mountain, about 1,860 ft, 9 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monteagle Limestone (limestone, dolostone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 3 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 Fort Payne reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Beeson Branch, Big Wills Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 610 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 Fort Payne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Payne has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Payne normally reaches 61° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1931; the record low 18°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.53 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Valley Head, 11 miles northeast, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
