The Clarksville 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.
6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 16° in 1995.
Clarksville’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buffalo Knob, about 1,030 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene series (clay, silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 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. 6 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Clarksville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mississippi: about 1,240 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clarksville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clarksville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Clarksville normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Clarksville L&D 24, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.