Sweet Water, Alabama
10 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1953 and the latest in 1986. It stands in the Sweet Water census division. It lies in ZIP code area 36782. It stands on Sheep Branch. The Survey maps it on the Sweet Water quadrangle. 228 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 184 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresSweet Water fell from 258 to 228 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 258 | |
| 2020 | 228 | -30 (-12%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
5 surveys from 10 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1953 USGS Montgomery quadrangle1:250000, 4 printings
- 1956 USGS Montgomery quadrangle1:250000
- 1957 USGS Montgomery quadrangle1:250000
- 1978 USGS Sweet Water quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
- 1986 USGS Selma quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
Fires near this place
106 since 1994Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 106 fires within 5 miles of Sweet Water between 1994 and 2019, burning about 769 acres in total. None started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 49 |
| Debris and open burning | 31 |
| Recreation and ceremony | 15 |
| Equipment and vehicle use | 4 |
| Arson/incendiarism | 4 |
| Power generation/transmission/distribution | 2 |
| Smoking | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 September 1997 | Arson/incendiarism | 10 acres | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
| 29 September 2007 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 5.0 acres | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
| 17 September 2006 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 6.0 acres | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
| 14 September 1994 | Recreation and ceremony | under an acre | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
| 13 September 1997 | Debris and open burning | 1.0 acres | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
| 12 September 2019 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Alabama Forestry Commission | 20190912-12 |
| 12 September 2019 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Alabama Forestry Commission | 20190912-11 |
| 30 August 1994 | Recreation and ceremony | 1.5 acres | Alabama Forestry Commission | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Storms near this place
24 since 1997Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Sweet Water in 24 storm reports between 1997 and 2026: 13 thunderstorm wind, 10 hail, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 2001 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $15,000 | Strong thunderstorm winds completely removed the roof of a mobile home. Trees that were blown down by the storm produced damage to two other nearby homes. |
| May 2001 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $15,000 | High thunderstorm winds blew trees and power lines down near Sweet Water. The winds also damaged bleachers at a baseball field. No one was injured. |
| May 1998 | Hail | Sweet Water | $10,000 | Golf ball size hail was reported north of Sweet Water. |
| April 2011 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $5,000 | A few trees were downed in and around Sweet Water. |
| April 1997 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $5,000 | A few large limbs were blown down on Highway 10, in the southern part of the county. |
| May 2003 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $5,000 | no account filed |
| August 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $3,000 | Several trees were blown down between the Lasca Community and the Nicholsville Community. |
| August 2002 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $3,000 | Several trees were blown down along SR 10 near Sweet Water. |
| June 1999 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $3,000 | Power lines were blown down in Sweet Water. |
| January 1998 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $3,000 | no account filed |
| August 2006 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | $2,000 | Several Trees were blown down on CR-16. |
| March 2026 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | - | Several trees were downed, with power outages, in the southern part of Marengo County, mainly the Nanafalia and Sweet Water areas. |
| June 2023 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | Quarter size hail in Sweet Water. |
| March 2021 | Tornado (EF0) | Sweet Water | - | National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in southern Marengo County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum winds near 65 mph. The tornado began near 3rd Avenue in Sweet Water and proceeded north crossing Highway 10. The tornado continued north of Sweet Water, dissipating near Beaver Creek Road. Damage mainly consisted of broken large tree branches. |
| June 2019 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | - | A few trees uprooted near the town of Sweet Water. |
| June 2018 | Thunderstorm Wind | Sweet Water | - | Several trees uprooted in the town of Sweet Water. |
| March 2005 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | Dime to penny size hail briefly covered the ground around Sweetwater. The hail was observed to near the Magnolia community. |
| March 2005 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | Penny size hail was reported in the Half Acre Community. The hail may have been larger but fell in rural western Marengo County. |
| May 2003 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | Penny size hail fell in and around Sweet Water. |
| June 1998 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | Dime size hail was reported covering the ground in Sweet Water according to the Fire Department. |
| June 2011 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | no account filed |
| May 2003 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | no account filed |
| May 2001 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | no account filed |
| January 1998 | Hail | Sweet Water | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Sweet Water | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q66621 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 153626. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.




