The Fairgarden 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
85° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 82° in 1993.
Fairgarden’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 2,180 ft, a difference of 1,210 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snag Mountain, about 5,240 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Fairgarden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hettie Creek, Flat Creek, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,700 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 Fairgarden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairgarden has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Fairgarden normally reaches 62° and falls to 36°. The record high is 82°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Sevierville, 11 miles west-northwest, 290 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
