The Memphis 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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90° on Nov. 17, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 89° in 1995.
Memphis’s center stands about 2,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,970 ft to 2,180 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lingos Formation (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 3 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 Memphis reaches the Gulf of America by way of Berkley Creek, Parker Creek, the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,230 river miles.
1,040 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Memphis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Memphis has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Memphis normally reaches 64° and falls to 36°. The record high is 88°, in 1988; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Memphis, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
