The Pennington Gap 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
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Sunny
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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 78° in 1993.
Pennington Gap’s center stands about 1,480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 2,440 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 4,140 ft, 13 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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, siltstone. 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. 8 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 Pennington Gap reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cane Creek, the Powell, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,820 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 Pennington Gap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pennington Gap has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Pennington Gap normally reaches 59° and falls to 32°. The record high is 77°, in 1931; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.05 in, fell in 1989.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 at Pennington Gap, here, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
