The Robertsdale 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.
92° on Nov. 14, 1945, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 89° in 1946.
Robertsdale’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 180 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Citronelle Formation (sand), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Robertsdale reaches Perdido Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Rock Creek, the Blackwater and the Perdido: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Robertsdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Robertsdale has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 69 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Robertsdale normally reaches 71° and falls to 44°. The record high is 92°, in 1945; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.40 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Fairhope 2 NE, 11 miles west, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.