The Pell City 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.35 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1888. The next wettest, 3.64 inches, fell in 2018.
Pell City’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Rock Mountain, about 1,550 ft, 8 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Parkwood Formation and Floyd Shale undifferentiated, 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 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 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 Pell City reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Blue Spring Branch, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 470 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 Pell City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pell City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pell City normally reaches 65° and falls to 38°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1888 at Talladega, 15 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
