The Shoals 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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4.78 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1908. The next wettest, 3.90 inches, fell in 1985.
Shoals’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gobblers Knob, about 960 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 41×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 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 Shoals reaches the Gulf of America by way of the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,290 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 Shoals; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shoals has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Shoals normally reaches 57° and falls to 35°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Shoals 8 S, 8 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
