The Palmer 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
Sunny; warmer
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 16, 1971, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 76° in 1989.
Palmer’s center stands about 1,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,780 ft to 2,360 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ross Mountain, about 2,350 ft, 2 miles west-southwest.
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 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 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.6 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 Palmer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mill Creek, the Collins, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,480 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 Palmer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Palmer has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 67 inches of water.
On November 14 Palmer normally reaches 57° and falls to 37°. The record high is 75°, in 1964; the record low 16°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Monteagle, 18 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
