The Dowelltown 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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85° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 83° in 1909.
Dowelltown’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Short Mountain, about 2,140 ft, 10 miles south.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 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 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.3 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 Dowelltown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, Smith Fork Creek, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,370 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 Dowelltown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dowelltown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Dowelltown normally reaches 62° and falls to 36°. The record high is 82°, in 1909; the record low 17°, in 2012. The most rain on this date, 2.50 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Carthage, 16 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
