The Langston 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. 12, 1985, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1891. Next is 82° in 2002.
Langston’s center stands about 620 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 Nat Mountain, about 1,670 ft, 15 miles northwest.
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 22×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 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 0.5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Langston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,390 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 Langston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Langston 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 Langston 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, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
