The Wise 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 76° in 2020.
Wise’s center stands about 2,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,080 ft to 2,750 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Knob, about 4,200 ft, 6 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wise Formation (sandstone, shale, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Wise reaches the Gulf of America by way of Glade Creek, Bear Creek, the Guest, the Clinch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 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 Wise; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wise has a oceanic climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 47 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Wise normally reaches 56° and falls to 34°. The record high is 75°, in 1993; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Wise 1 SE, here, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
