The Highland Lake 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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82° on Nov. 15, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 2005.
Highland Lake’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 870 ft to 1,410 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cahaba Mountain, about 1,530 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. 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. 7 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 Highland Lake reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Blackburn Fork Little Warrior, the Little Warrior, the Locust Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 510 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Highland Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highland Lake has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Highland Lake normally reaches 65° and falls to 41°. The record high is 79°, in 1959; the record low 17°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Oneonta, 3 miles north, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
