The Shannon 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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84° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 82° in 1958.
Shannon’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Horn Mountain, about 1,860 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conasauga Group; Middle unit; Shale unit (limestone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 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 22×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Limestone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 1 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 Shannon reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Ward Creek, Dozier Creek, the Oostanaula, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 650 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 Shannon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shannon has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Shannon normally reaches 64° and falls to 39°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Rome R B Russell Airport, 5 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
