The Blountsville 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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4.47 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1949. The next wettest, 2.58 inches, fell in 1955.
Blountsville’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ordovician rocks, undifferentiated (shale, limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.4 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 Blountsville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,520 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 Blountsville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Blountsville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Blountsville normally reaches 51° and falls to 31°. The record high is 78°, in 1955; the record low 6°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.43 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at New Castle 3 SW, 14 miles southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
