The Athens 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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19° on Nov. 16, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1857. Next is 20° in 1916.
Athens’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite Gneiss/ Feldspathic Biotite Gneiss, from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Schist, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.3 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 Athens reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the North Oconee, the Oconee and the Altamaha: about 350 river miles.
210 miles of the trip are on the Oconee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Athens has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Athens normally reaches 65° and falls to 42°. The record high is 84°, in 1931; the record low 23°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1857 from the Athens Area threaded record (Athens Ben Epps Airport, 3 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
