The Meridian 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
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
85° on Nov. 13, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1889. Next is 84° in 1921.
Meridian’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Barton, about 560 ft, 1 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wilcox formation (sand, clay), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 57×. 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, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Claystone, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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 Meridian reaches the Gulf of America by way of Robbins Branch, Sowashee Creek, Okatibbee Creek, the Chickasawhay, the Pascagoula and the West Pascagoula: about 260 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Chickasawhay.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Meridian; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Meridian has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Meridian normally reaches 69° and falls to 43°. The record high is 84°, in 1921; the record low 21°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 2.07 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1889 from the Meridian Area threaded record (Meridian Key Field, 3 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
