The Oak Ridge 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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7.34 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 3.63 inches, fell in 2015.
Oak Ridge’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 130 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Braided Stream Terraces (sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Oak Ridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Boeuf, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 320 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Atchafalaya.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oak Ridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oak Ridge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Oak Ridge normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 2011; the record low 23°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 2.31 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 from the Monroe Area threaded record (Monroe Regional Airport, 17 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
