The Norris 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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Sunny; warmer
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3.93 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1941. The next wettest, 3.50 inches, fell in 1968.
Norris’s center stands about 990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brown Mountain, about 1,970 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotite-plagioclase-quartz gneiss and biotite-muscovite schist (biotite-gneiss, mica-schist), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 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 Norris reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Huggins Creek, Twelvemile Creek, the Seneca, Little Beaverdam Creek and the Savannah: about 320 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Norris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Norris has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Norris normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 78°, in 2020; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.81 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 from the Pickens Area threaded record (Pickens, 8 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
