The Roanoke 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
Partly cloudy
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4.69 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1938. The next wettest, 3.94 inches, fell in 1983.
Roanoke’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cockrell Mountain, about 1,100 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dadeville Complex; Rock Mills Granite Gneiss (biotite-gneiss), 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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 9 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, metagraywacke. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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. 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 Roanoke reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Town Creek, High Pine Creek, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 490 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 Roanoke; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Roanoke has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Roanoke normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 1985; the record low 20°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 4.35 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Rock Mills, 5 miles east, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
