The Arkansas City 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.
17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 20° in 1940.
Arkansas City’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 180 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium - Alluvial deposits of local streams or of overbank flow of major streams (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 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 Arkansas City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Bayou Macon, the Tensas, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 450 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Bayou Macon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Arkansas City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arkansas City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Arkansas City normally reaches 65° and falls to 42°. The record high is 87°, in 1955; the record low 24°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 3.22 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 from the Greenville Area threaded record (Greenville Asos, 15 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.