The Sparta 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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80° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 80° in 2003.
Sparta’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chestnut Mountain, about 2,050 ft, 9 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Louis Limestone and Warsaw Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 17×. 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: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Sparta reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Calfkiller, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,440 river miles.
Lake on the way: Bards 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 Sparta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sparta has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 59 inches of water.
On November 14 Sparta normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 78°, in 1993; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.41 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Sparta Wastewater Plant, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
