The Cumberland Gap 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 76° in 1993.
Cumberland Gap’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 2,580 ft, a difference of 1,450 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brush Mountain, about 3,390 ft, 8 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Cumberland Gap reaches the Gulf of America by way of Gap Creek, Old Town Creek, the Powell, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,710 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 Cumberland Gap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cumberland Gap has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 55 inches of water.
On November 14 Cumberland Gap normally reaches 58° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Tazewell, 11 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
