The Westpoint 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
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
14° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 15° in 1968.
Westpoint’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dug Hill, about 1,040 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.6 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 Westpoint reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chisholm Creek, Factory Creek, Shoal Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,310 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 Westpoint; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Westpoint has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Westpoint normally reaches 61° and falls to 37°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Lawrenceburg Filt Plant, 13 miles northeast, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
