The Atlanta 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
8° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 12° in 2000.
Atlanta’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marmaton Group (limestone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 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.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Atlanta reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork Salt, the Salt River and the Mississippi: about 1,420 river miles.
Lake on the way: Mark Twain Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atlanta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atlanta has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Atlanta normally reaches 53° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Long Branch Reservoir, 10 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
