The Benton 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.
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4.40 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1895. The next wettest, 3.65 inches, fell in 2010.
Benton’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Baber, about 560 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial, coastal and low terrace deposits (sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Chalk. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Chalk, marl. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.8 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 Benton reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Old Town Creek, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 290 river miles.
240 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Benton normally reaches 70° and falls to 43°. The record high is 89°, in 1931; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Selma, 14 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
