The Mentone 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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10° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 12° in 1940.
Mentone’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,880 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pigeon Mountain, about 2,330 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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, shale, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 6 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 Mentone reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the West Fork Little, the Little River, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 630 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lay Lake.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mentone; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mentone has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Mentone normally reaches 61° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1931; the record low 18°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.53 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Valley Head, here, 620 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
