The Paducah 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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10° on Nov. 13, 1986, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 10° in 2019.
Paducah’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lewis Hill, about 620 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Holocene, less than 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 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 Paducah reaches the Gulf of America by way of Perkins Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,020 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paducah; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Paducah has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Paducah normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 77°, in 2025; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Paducah Barkley Regional Airport, 10 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
