The Elba 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
74° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 72° in 2022.
Elba’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shelton Hill, about 1,310 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 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 Elba reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Whitewater, the Whitewater and the Mississippi: about 1,740 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elba; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elba has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. A normal year brings about 48 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
On November 14 Elba normally reaches 44° and falls to 25°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Theilman 1 SSW, 16 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
