The Taft 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. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 79° in 1958.
Taft’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Capshaw Mountain, about 1,280 ft, 14 miles south.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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 Taft reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pinnel Creek, Coldwater Creek, the Elk River, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,370 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical) and 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 Taft; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Taft has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Taft normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Fayetteville Water Plant, 12 miles northeast, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
