The Gate City 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
14° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1916. Next is 15° in 1969.
Gate City’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 2,360 ft, a difference of 1,140 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Knob, about 3,160 ft, 5 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moccasin or Bays Formation through Blackford Formation (shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Ordovician to Silurian, 422 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Gate City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Moccasin Creek, Big Moccasin Creek, the North Fork Holston, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,810 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 Gate City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gate City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 5 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Gate City normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 82°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.05 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1916 at Kingsport, 9 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
