The Columbia 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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13° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 17° in 1968.
Columbia’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flanigan Hill, about 1,200 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.8 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 Columbia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Duck, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
Lake on the way: Pickwick 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 Columbia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Columbia has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 57 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Columbia normally reaches 61° and falls to 35°. The record high is 78°, in 1964; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.98 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Columbia 3 WNW, 3 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
