The Duffield 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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14° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1990. Next is 14° in 2019.
Duffield’s center stands about 1,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 2,890 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chattanooga Shale and Wildcat Valley Sandstone (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 21 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 15 smaller units 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 Duffield reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Clinch, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,770 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings 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 Duffield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Duffield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 56 inches of water.
On November 14 Duffield normally reaches 58° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.66 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1990 at Big Stone Gap, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
