The Atlanta 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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79° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 77° in 2022.
Atlanta’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wabash Formation (limestone, dolostone), 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 64×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.6 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 Atlanta reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cicero Creek, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,460 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 Atlanta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atlanta has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Atlanta normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1999; the record low 5°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.84 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at Tipton 5 SW, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
