The Mowbray Mountain 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.
15° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 17° in 2014.
Mowbray Mountain’s center stands about 1,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 740 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Knob, about 2,260 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
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 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. 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. 4 smaller units 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 Mowbray Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mowbray Creek, Deep Creek, Soddy Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,510 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 Mowbray Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mowbray Mountain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Lookout Mtn-Point Park, 20 miles south-southwest, 430 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.