The Watertown 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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11° on Nov. 17, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 13° in 1916.
Watertown’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,240 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Defiance, about 1,360 ft, 2 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Stones River Group; Carters Limestone, from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 25×. 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: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, calcarenite. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.5 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 Watertown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beech Log Creek, Round Lick Creek, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,340 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 Watertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watertown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Watertown normally reaches 61° and falls to 37°. The record high is 79°, in 1902; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.30 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Lebanon, 13 miles northwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
