The Powells Crossroads 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1879. Next is 80° in 1958.
Powells Crossroads’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 2,110 ft, a difference of 1,480 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ross Mountain, about 2,350 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 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. 5 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 Powells Crossroads reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Sequatchie, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,460 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 Powells Crossroads; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Powells Crossroads has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Powells Crossroads normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 18°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 2.47 in, fell in 1929.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1879 from the Chattanooga Area threaded record (Chattanooga Airport, 19 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
