The Rainbow 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
3.40 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1953. The next wettest, 2.24 inches, fell in 1989.
Rainbow City’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 500 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buzzard Rock, about 1,380 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conasauga Formation (limestone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 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. 9 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 Rainbow City reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, Big Canoe Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 520 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 Rainbow City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rainbow City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rainbow City normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 24°, in 1953. The most rain on this date, 2.23 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Gadsden, 6 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
