The Spencer 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
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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.
Spencer’s center stands about 1,800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 880 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hitchcox Mountain, about 2,160 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Crab Orchard Mountains Group, including Rockcastle Conglomerate, Vandever Formation, Newton Sandstone, Whitwell Shale, and Sewanee Conglomerate, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. 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 Spencer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Laurel Creek, the Rocky, the Caney Fork, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,430 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 Spencer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Spencer 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 Spencer 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, 11 miles north, 900 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
