The Gainesboro 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.
Gainesboro’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 500 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goodpasture Mountain, about 1,510 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sequatchie Formation, Leipers Formation, Inman Formation and Catheys Formation (limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 30×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Gainesboro reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cordell Hull Reservoir, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake 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 Gainesboro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gainesboro 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 Gainesboro 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, 18 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
