The Myrtlewood 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.
3.88 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1951. The next wettest, 3.44 inches, fell in 2009.
Myrtlewood’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows High terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.9 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 Myrtlewood reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Lost Creek, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 190 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Myrtlewood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Myrtlewood 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.
On November 14 Myrtlewood normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 3.05 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Demopolis Lock And Dam, 19 miles north-northeast, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.