The Rome 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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86° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 82° in 1955.
Rome’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lavender Mountain, about 1,700 ft, 8 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale, chert. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. 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. 4 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 Rome reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Little Dry Creek, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 640 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 Rome; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rome 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 Rome 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
