The Tazewell 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1966. Next is 76° in 1993.
Tazewell’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,800 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brush Mountain, about 3,390 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chickamauga Group (limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
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 14×. 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, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Tazewell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Russell Creek, the Powell, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,740 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 Tazewell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tazewell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 55 inches of water.
On November 14 Tazewell normally reaches 58° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.58 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1966 at Tazewell, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
