The Spruce Pine 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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15° on Nov. 13, 1968, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 15° in 1969.
Spruce Pine’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuscaloosa Group; Gordo Formation (sand, clay), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Spruce Pine reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Bear Creek, Cedar Creek, Bear Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Lakes on the way: White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Spruce Pine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spruce Pine 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 Spruce Pine normally reaches 63° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 16°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 1.75 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Russellville No 2, 8 miles north, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
