The Jonesboro 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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22° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 24° in 1997.
Jonesboro’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 160 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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 7 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. 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.
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.
Jonesboro straddles the Eastern Continental Divide. Rain on the east side runs to the Atlantic Ocean; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Flint and the Apalachicola: about 430 river miles. One that lands on the east side reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Rum Creek, Little Cotton Indian Creek, Big Cotton Indian Creek, the South River, the Ocmulgee and the Altamaha: about 410 river miles.
330 miles of the trip are on the Flint.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Jonesboro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jonesboro has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Jonesboro normally reaches 63° and falls to 41°. The record high is 74°, in 2020; the record low 25°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Jonesboro, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
