The Ray 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.
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18° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 20° in 1969.
Ray’s center stands about 750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Candler Mountain, about 1,270 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Elkahatchee Quartz Diorite Gneiss (orthogneiss), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Orthogneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 12 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Ray reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Oakachoy Creek, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 440 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ray has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ray normally reaches 67° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1989; the record low 23°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.76 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Alexander City, 6 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
