The Signal Mountain 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
15° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1995. Next is 17° in 2014.
Signal Mountain’s center stands about 1,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 2,000 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Horseshoe, about 2,100 ft, 8 miles north.
The section below crosses 15 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.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 9 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 Signal Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,470 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 Signal Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Signal Mountain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1995 at Lookout Mtn-Point Park, 8 miles south, 380 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
