The Kingston 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. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 1955.
Kingston’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Pine Log Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Knox Group undifferentiated (dolostone), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Kingston reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Two Run Creek, the Etowah, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 660 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 Kingston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kingston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Kingston normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 18°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Rome, 12 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.