The Valley Head 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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10° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 12° in 1940.
Valley Head’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 930 ft to 1,860 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gulf Mountain, about 2,220 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monteagle Limestone (limestone, dolostone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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, shale, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Valley Head reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Big Wills Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 620 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 Valley Head; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valley Head has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Valley Head normally reaches 61° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1931; the record low 18°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.53 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Valley Head, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
