The Rockvale 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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13° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1890. Next is 14° in 1940.
Rockvale’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 1,110 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Soapstone Hill, about 1,340 ft, 11 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Stones River Group; Ridley Limestone, from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
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 31×. 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. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 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 Rockvale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Puckett Creek, Overall Creek, the West Fork Stones, the Stones, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake and Duncan Lake (historical).
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockvale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockvale has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Rockvale normally reaches 61° and falls to 37°. The record high is 78°, in 1964; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.40 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Murfreesboro 5 N, 14 miles northeast, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
