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Soil and Sunlight: The Ground Stays Warm as the Valley Loses Daylight
Why is the soil still warm in November in Columbus, Georgia?
Soil around Columbus is still near 61 degrees a couple of inches down because dense, damp earth heats and cools slowly and settles toward a multi-day average instead of following the daily swing in air temperature.
Photo: Anil Sharma / Pexels
Stand on the Chattahoochee RiverWalk in Columbus at 7:02 this morning and you catch the sunrise. Stand there at 5:44 in the afternoon and you watch it go. That is 10 hours and 42 minutes of daylight between the two, and we are giving up about a minute and a half more every day — roughly eleven minutes a week, which is why the drive home from Phenix City or Opelika suddenly needs headlights at an hour that felt like late afternoon in September.
The ground has not caught up, and it will not for a while. At about two and a half inches down, soil across the area is running near 61 degrees, and over recent days it has stayed between 56 and 67. Compare that to the air: the normal high for this date in Columbus is 71 and the normal low is 48. The air swings more than 20 degrees between dawn and mid-afternoon. The soil barely moves.
That is not a quirk of this valley; it is how dirt works. Soil is dense, it holds water, and water takes a great deal of heat to warm or cool. Heat also travels through packed earth slowly, a few inches a day rather than instantly. So the ground never experiences the cold dawn or the warm afternoon — it settles toward the average of many days strung together, and it lags weeks behind the calendar. In spring that is why a warm March does not mean warm planting beds. In November it is the reverse gift: the air has turned autumn, and the ground is still running late summer.
For anyone with a shovel in Hamilton, Lumpkin, Cuthbert or Greenville, that lag is the whole point of fall planting. Roots keep growing in soil this warm even when the tops of plants have shut down for the year. A tree or shrub set out now spends the next several weeks quietly building root system underground while nothing visible happens above the mulch, which is why the ground temperature matters more than the thermometer on the porch.
The light is doing something different from the warmth. The sun is low enough now that shadows stretch long across Lafayette Square in LaGrange even at midday, yet the ultraviolet index still reached about 4.7 today. Low sun does not mean harmless sun. An afternoon on the ridge at Dowdell's Knob above Warm Springs, or out on the canyon rim near Lumpkin, will still color the back of your neck.
The shortening continues until the December solstice, which arrives Monday, December 21 at 10:03 AM — 44 days from today. The pace eases as we get close; that is where the word solstice comes from, the sun appearing to stand still before it turns back. Until then, if you want sunlight on a trail in Pine Mountain, at Chewacla near Auburn, or along the water at Eufaula, plan on being out the door earlier than instinct tells you. The afternoon ends before you expect it to now, even though the ground under your boots has not been told yet.
Right now in Columbus, Georgia
49°Temperature
45°Dew point
87%Humidity
5 mphWind — north
30.03"Pressure
The next seven days
Day
High
Low
Rain
Conditions
TODAY
70°
42°
0%
Partly Sunny
SUN
73°
42°
0%
Sunny
MON
76°
42°
0%
Sunny
TUE
75°
45°
0%
Mostly Sunny
WED
75°
48°
2%
Mostly Sunny
THU
71°
43°
9%
Mostly Sunny
FRI
63°
37°
1%
Sunny
Written by the CNAW2 weather desk from CNAW2 weather desk data. Last updated November 7, 2026 at 7:43 AM Eastern. Covering Columbus and Phenix City, Auburn–Opelika, LaGrange, Eufaula and the rest of the 19-county CNAW viewing area.
