The Tazewell 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
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Sunny
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Mostly sunny
73° on Nov. 17, 1958, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 73° in 1993.
Tazewell’s center stands about 2,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,360 ft to 3,950 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hutchinson Rock, about 4,520 ft, 7 miles east.
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 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 10 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 Tazewell reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,910 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 Tazewell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tazewell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Tazewell normally reaches 52° and falls to 29°. The record high is 70°, in 1994; the record low 3°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Burkes Garden, 10 miles east, 540 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
