The Natural Bridge 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
4.05 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 1957.
Natural Bridge’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 590 ft to 850 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Balls Mountain, about 1,040 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (upper part) (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.6 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 Natural Bridge reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Splunge Creek, Blackwater Creek, the Mulberry Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 490 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Natural Bridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Natural Bridge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 66 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Natural Bridge normally reaches 62° and falls to 42°. The record high is 80°, in 1964; the record low 19°, in 1975. The most rain on this date, 3.30 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Haleyville, 10 miles north-northwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
