The Memphis 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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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 77° in 2010.
Memphis’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Hills, about 1,030 ft, 6 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Memphis reaches the Gulf of America by way of Silver Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,360 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 Memphis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Memphis has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Louisville Mcalpine, 14 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
