The Cleveland 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.
82° on Nov. 13, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 79° in 2006.
Cleveland’s center stands about 1,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,400 ft to 2,150 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blood Mountain, about 4,440 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic Gneiss undifferentiated, from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 7 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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.
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 Cleveland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tesnatee Creek, the Chestatee, the Chattahoochee and the Apalachicola: about 510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Walter F George Reservoir, Woodmen Youth Camp Lake, West Point Lake and Bartletts Ferry Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cleveland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cleveland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 65 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Cleveland, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.