The Gardendale 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.
89° on Nov. 17, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 86° in 1963.
Gardendale’s center stands about 2,970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,930 ft to 3,010 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 24 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.
Gardendale has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Gardendale normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 13°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 from the Midland-Odessa Area threaded record (Midland International Airport, 11 miles east-southeast, 110 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.