The McCalla 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
20° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 21° in 1997.
McCalla’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Shades Mountain, about 860 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Copper Ridge Dolomite (dolostone, chert), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, chert. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. 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. 3 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 McCalla reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, Mud Creek, Shades Creek, the Cahaba, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 370 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McCalla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McCalla has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 McCalla normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 23°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.09 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1977 at Bessemer 3 WSW, 3 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
