The Marshall 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
Sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
11° on Nov. 17, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 11° in 1969.
Marshall’s center stands about 1,940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,620 ft to 2,570 ft, a difference of 950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sandymush Bald, about 5,130 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Migmatitic Biotite-Hornblende Gneisses, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion 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 8×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Marshall reaches the Gulf of America by way of the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,780 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 Marshall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marshall 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 Marshall 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
