The Summertown 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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12° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 14° in 1969.
Summertown’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flanigan Hill, about 1,200 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fort Payne Formation and Chattanooga Shale (chert), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, calcarenite. 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.
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 Summertown reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Saw Creek, Saw Creek, the Buffalo, the Duck, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,260 river miles.
Lake on the way: Pickwick 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 Summertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Summertown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 62 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Summertown normally reaches 62° and falls to 36°. The record high is 81°, in 1964; the record low 14°, in 1969. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Mount Pleasant 1 N, 10 miles northeast, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
