The Alberta 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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8° on Nov. 12, 2016, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 14° in 1986.
Alberta’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gneissic Granite and Granodiorite (granite, granodiorite), from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Proterozoic to Paleozoic, 252 to 2,500 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 Alberta reaches Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Roses Creek, Great Creek, the Meherrin and the Chowan: about 160 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Meherrin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alberta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alberta has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Alberta normally reaches 61° and falls to 36°. The record high is 75°, in 1989; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Fort Pickett, 12 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
