The Fairmount 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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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.
Fairmount’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sharp Mountain, about 2,340 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conasauga Group; Middle unit; Limestone unit, from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old.
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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, phyllite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.6 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 Fairmount reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Pinhook Creek, Salacoa Creek, the Coosawattee, the Oostanaula, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 710 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 Fairmount; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairmount 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 Fairmount 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, 19 miles south, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
