The Adams 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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3.89 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.64 inches, fell in 1993.
Adams’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 940 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Louisville Limestone through Brassfield Limestone, from the Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 12 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 Adams reaches the Gulf of America by way of Clifty Creek, the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,450 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Adams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Adams has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 15 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Adams normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 1931; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.70 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Shelbyville Sewage Plant, 16 miles northwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
