The Phil Campbell 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
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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.
Phil Campbell’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuscaloosa Group; Gordo Formation (sand, clay), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 41×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.1 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 Phil Campbell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bluff Creek, Bear Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,340 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 Phil Campbell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Phil Campbell 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 Phil Campbell 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, 9 miles south-southeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
