The Erin 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
83° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 82° in 1909.
Erin’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Mound, about 750 ft, 8 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fort Payne Formation and Chattanooga Shale (chert), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 39×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Erin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Erin Branch, Wells Creek, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,140 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Erin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Erin has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Erin normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.30 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Dover 1 W, 14 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
