The Rock Creek 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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20° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1977. Next is 21° in 1997.
Rock Creek’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 340 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Shades Mountain, about 860 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (upper part) (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, chert. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. 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 Rock Creek reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Valley Creek, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 410 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rock Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Creek has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Rock Creek normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 81°, in 1993; the record low 23°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.09 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1977 at Bessemer 3 WSW, 7 miles southeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
