The Minor Hill 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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12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 15° in 1969.
Minor Hill’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 970 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Oak Hill, about 1,040 ft, 15 miles north-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 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 Minor Hill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Puncheon Branch, Sugar Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical) and Pickwick 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 Minor Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Minor Hill has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Minor Hill normally reaches 61° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1964; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.21 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Pulaski Wastewater Plant, 11 miles northeast, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
