The Muscle Shoals 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; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
12° on Nov. 17, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 13° in 1916.
Muscle Shoals’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hawk Pride Mountain, about 910 ft, 8 miles west-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 42×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
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 Muscle Shoals reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pond 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 Muscle Shoals; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Muscle Shoals 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 Muscle Shoals 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, 4 miles east). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
