The Bella Vista 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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4.17 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1898. The next wettest, 3.54 inches, fell in 2015.
Bella Vista’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Elkhorn Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Boone Formation (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million 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 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 Bella Vista reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tanyard Creek, Little Sugar Creek, the Elk River, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,160 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark 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 Bella Vista; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bella Vista has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Bella Vista normally reaches 61° and falls to 40°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 7°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 4.04 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Gravette, 10 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
