The Hanover 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.
87° on Nov. 14, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 84° in 1958.
Hanover’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rebecca Mountain, about 1,540 ft, 11 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hatchet Creek Group; Hanover Schist (mica-schist), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Phyllite, metaclastic. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, muscovite-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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. 6 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 Hanover reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, Hatchet Creek, 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 Hanover; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hanover 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 Hanover 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, 14 miles north, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.