The Rock Spring 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1879. Next is 80° in 1958.
Rock Spring’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pigeon Mountain, about 2,330 ft, 12 miles southwest.
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 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 6 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 Rock Spring reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peavine Creek, South Chickamauga Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 Rock Spring; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rock Spring has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Rock Spring normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 18°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 2.47 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1879 from the Chattanooga Area threaded record (Chattanooga Airport, 15 miles north, 200 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
