The Laurel 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
4.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1891. The next wettest, 4.33 inches, fell in 1961.
Laurel’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 340 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buffalo Hill, about 420 ft, 7 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catahoula formation (sand), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old.
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: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 24 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 Laurel reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tallahala Creek, the Leaf, the Pascagoula and the West Pascagoula: about 180 river miles.
65 miles of the trip are on the Pascagoula.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Laurel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Laurel has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Laurel normally reaches 70° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 3.97 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Laurel, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
