The Ephesus 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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4.84 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 2009.
Ephesus’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bee Hill, about 1,620 ft, 15 miles northwest.
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 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.
Schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 7 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, quartzite, gneiss. 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. 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 Ephesus reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Little Tallapoosa, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 550 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ephesus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ephesus has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ephesus normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.71 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Carrollton, 17 miles northeast, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
