The Sand Rock 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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15° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 16° in 2019.
Sand Rock’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Brandon, about 1,690 ft, 10 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 7 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 Sand Rock reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Yellow Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 590 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 Sand Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sand Rock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Sand Rock normally reaches 61° and falls to 39°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.68 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Sand Mount Substation, 12 miles west-northwest, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
