The Gray 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.
86° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 85° in 1958.
Gray’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite Granite Gneiss/ Feldspathic Biotite Gneiss/ Amphibolite Hornblende Gneiss, from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 15 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous to Tertiary, 2.6 to 145 million years old. About 0.4 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 Gray reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bonner Creek, Walnut Creek, the Ocmulgee and the Altamaha: about 340 river miles.
190 miles of the trip are on the Ocmulgee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gray; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gray has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gray normally reaches 70° and falls to 42°. The record high is 83°, in 1955; the record low 21°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 from the Macon Area threaded record (Macon Middle Ga Regional Airport, 23 miles south-southwest, 260 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.