The Rutledge 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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17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 20° in 2014.
Rutledge’s center stands about 1,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 980 ft to 2,210 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Butt of Powell, about 2,300 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maryville Limestone, Rogersville Shale, Rutledge Limestone (limestone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 8 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 Rutledge reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Hide Creek, Richland Creek, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,710 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 Rutledge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rutledge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Rutledge normally reaches 58° and falls to 39°. The record high is 73°, in 1999; the record low 23°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.36 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Morristown Wfo, 10 miles southeast, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
