The Bowman 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
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Partly cloudy
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5° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 8° in 1916.
Bowman’s center stands about 1,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,540 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Rock Mountain, about 2,720 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rockcastle Conglomerate (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Bowman reaches the Gulf of America by way of Patton Creek, Scott Creek, the Obed, the Emory, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,640 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 Bowman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bowman has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 63 inches of water.
On November 14 Bowman normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 74°, in 1958; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Crossville Experiment Station, 6 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
