The Monterey 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
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Partly cloudy
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12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 15° in 1997.
Monterey’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 2,010 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hampton Mountain, about 2,050 ft, 3 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Crab Orchard Mountains Group, including Rockcastle Conglomerate, Vandever Formation, Newton Sandstone, Whitwell Shale, and Sewanee Conglomerate, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 17×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Monterey reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stamps Hollow Creek, the Calfkiller, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,470 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards 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 Monterey; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monterey has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 64 inches of water.
On November 14 Monterey normally reaches 56° and falls to 38°. The record high is 72°, in 1954; the record low 17°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.70 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Monterey, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
