The Riceville 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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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1962. Next is 78° in 1989.
Riceville’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Starr Mountain, about 2,350 ft, 13 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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.
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 Riceville reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Mouse Creek, the Hiwassee, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,540 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 Riceville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Riceville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Riceville normally reaches 61° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 1989; the record low 18°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Athens, 7 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
