The Atlanta 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely; cooler
Showers likely; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
21° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1947. Next is 23° in 1997.
Atlanta’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hickory Hill, about 460 ft, 8 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queen City Sand (siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Atlanta reaches the Gulf of America by way of Black Bayou, Twelvemile Bayou, Cross Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 470 river miles.
Lake on the way: Black Bayou Lake.
260 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atlanta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atlanta has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Atlanta normally reaches 65° and falls to 45°. The record high is 81°, in 2005; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Wright Patman Dm & Lk, 13 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
