The Richlands 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
11° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 12° in 2014.
Richlands’s center stands about 1,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,920 ft to 2,850 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beartown Mountain, about 4,710 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
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 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Richlands reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,880 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 Richlands; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Richlands has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 18 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Richlands normally reaches 58° and falls to 31°. The record high is 77°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Richlands, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
