The Elgin 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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79° on Nov. 12, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 75° in 1971.
Elgin’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Squire Knob, about 3,360 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Crooked Fork Group, including Wartburg Sandstone, Glenmary Shale, Coalfield Sandstone, Burnt Mill Shale, Crossville Sandstone, Dorton Shale (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 11×. 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, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Elgin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Black Wolf Creek, White Oak Creek, the Clear Fork, the Big South Fork Cumberland, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake, Lake Cumberland and Cordell Hull Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elgin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elgin has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Elgin normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 75°, in 1971; the record low 11°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.76 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Oneida, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
