The Mars Hill 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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11° on Nov. 17, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 11° in 1969.
Mars Hill’s center stands about 2,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,020 ft to 3,370 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blackstock Knob, about 6,310 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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 Mars Hill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ivy Creek, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,800 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mars Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mars Hill has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Mars Hill normally reaches 59° and falls to 30°. The record high is 78°, in 1924; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Marshall, 7 miles west-southwest, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
