The Valle Crucis 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny; warmer
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5.19 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1980. The next wettest, 3.26 inches, fell in 2009.
Valle Crucis’s center stands about 2,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,660 ft to 4,070 ft, a difference of 1,410 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Calloway Peak, about 5,920 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite Granitic Gneiss, from the Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 950 to 1,250 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 to Neoproterozoic, 950 to 1,250 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metagranite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 680 to 710 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 700 to 712 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 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 Valle Crucis reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Watauga, the South Fork Holston, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Valle Crucis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valle Crucis has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 59 inches of water.
On November 14 Valle Crucis normally reaches 53° and falls to 30°. The record high is 68°, in 1985; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Boone 1 SE, 7 miles east, 420 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
