The Goodwater 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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18° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 20° in 1969.
Goodwater’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rebecca Mountain, about 1,540 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wedowee Group; Wedowee Group undifferentiated (mica-schist, phyllite), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Orthogneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metaclastic. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, muscovite-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 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 Goodwater reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Baker Creek, Socapatoy Creek, Hatchet Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 440 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 Goodwater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goodwater has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Goodwater normally reaches 67° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1989; the record low 23°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.76 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Alexander City, 10 miles south-southeast, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
