The McDonough 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.
McDonough’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Barrow Hill, about 1,020 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotitic Gneiss / Mica Schist/ Amphibolite (amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist), 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 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 16 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. 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.
A raindrop that lands in McDonough reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Camp Creek, Walnut Creek, the South River, the Ocmulgee and the Altamaha: about 400 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 McDonough; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McDonough 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 McDonough 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, 13 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
