The Sumiton 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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18° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 19° in 1940.
Sumiton’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hamilton Mountain, about 990 ft, 14 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 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 Sumiton reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Burnt Cane Creek, the Mulberry Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 420 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 Sumiton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sumiton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Sumiton normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 4.43 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 from the Birmingham Area threaded record (Birmingham Airport, 22 miles southeast, 160 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
