The Forest Park 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. 16, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1878. Next is 81° in 1985.
Forest Park’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite Gneiss/ Amphibolite (gneiss, amphibolite), 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 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 14 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. 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.
Forest Park straddles the Eastern Continental Divide. Rain on the southwest side runs to the Gulf of America; most of the rest goes to the Atlantic Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Conley Creek, the South River, the Ocmulgee and the Altamaha: about 430 river miles. One that lands on the southwest side reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jester Creek, the Flint and the Apalachicola: about 440 river miles.
Lake on the way: Jackson Lake.
240 miles of the trip are on the Ocmulgee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Forest Park; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Forest Park has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Forest Park normally reaches 64° and falls to 44°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 22°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 1.80 in, fell in 1888.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1878 from the Atlanta Area threaded record (Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, 4 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.