The Hollywood 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.
82° on Nov. 12, 1985, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 82° in 2002.
Hollywood’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Letson Point, about 1,780 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
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 8 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 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 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 Hollywood reaches the Gulf of America by way of Town Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,410 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hollywood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hollywood has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Hollywood normally reaches 63° and falls to 37°. The record high is 78°, in 1909; the record low 17°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 1.97 in, fell in 1921.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Scottsboro, 6 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.