The Steele 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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3.40 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1953. The next wettest, 2.24 inches, fell in 1989.
Steele’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 900 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chandler Mountain, about 1,500 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Steele reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Big Canoe Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 530 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 Steele; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Steele has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Steele normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 24°, in 1953. The most rain on this date, 2.23 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Gadsden, 14 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
