The Altamont 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 16, 1971, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 76° in 1989.
Altamont’s center stands about 1,850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 1,990 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ross Mountain, about 2,350 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Crab Orchard Mountains Group, including Rockcastle Conglomerate, Vandever Formation, Newton Sandstone, Whitwell Shale, and Sewanee Conglomerate, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 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 Altamont reaches the Gulf of America by way of Piney Creek, Big Creek, the Collins, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,480 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards 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 Altamont; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Altamont has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 67 inches of water.
On November 14 Altamont normally reaches 57° and falls to 37°. The record high is 75°, in 1964; the record low 16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Monteagle, 16 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
