The Lookout Mountain 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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15° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 17° in 2014.
Lookout Mountain’s center stands about 1,810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 2,090 ft, a difference of 1,440 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Top, about 2,320 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pennsylvanian undifferentiated (sandstone, shale, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Lookout Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chattanooga Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,490 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lookout Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lookout Mountain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Lookout Mtn-Point Park, 2 miles north-northeast, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
