The Alexander 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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17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1875. Next is 20° in 1940.
Alexander’s center stands about 370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shinall Mountain, about 1,080 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 45×. 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, fine-detrital. Age: Early Eocene, 48 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chert, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, marl. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Alexander reaches the Gulf of America by way of Crooked Creek, Fourche Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 750 river miles.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alexander; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alexander has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Alexander normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 22°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.57 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1875 from the Little Rock Area threaded record (Little Rock Airport Adams Field, 13 miles east-northeast, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
