The Leighton 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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12° on Nov. 17, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 13° in 1916.
Leighton’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is LaGrange Mountain, about 890 ft, 4 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuscumbia Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Leighton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, Spring Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Leighton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Leighton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Leighton normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1916; the record low 18°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.88 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Muscle Shoals Area threaded record (Muscle Shoals Airport, 5 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
