The Sturgis 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.
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4.82 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1891. The next wettest, 4.68 inches, fell in 2015.
Sturgis’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Mountain, about 620 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Porters Creek formation (clay), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 11 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 Sturgis reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Sand Creek, the Noxubee, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 410 river miles.
220 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sturgis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sturgis has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sturgis normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at State University, 17 miles east-northeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
