The Appleton 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.07 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1882. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 1978.
Appleton’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Oak Mountain, about 2,050 ft, 5 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Atoka Formation, undivided (sandstone, black-shale), 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 11×. 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, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
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 Appleton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Poe Creek, Hackers Creek, West Fork Point Remove Creek, Pool Hollow Branch, Point Remove Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Murray Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Appleton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Appleton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Appleton normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.82 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1882 from the Russellville Area threaded record (Russellville Municipal Airport, 17 miles southwest, 120 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
