The Emerson 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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15° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 16° in 2025.
Emerson’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Mountain, about 2,300 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Emerson reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Etowah, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 680 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 Emerson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Emerson has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Emerson normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 78°, in 1964; the record low 18°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.70 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Allatoona Dam 2, 3 miles north-northeast, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
