The Big Flat 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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10° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 10° in 1986.
Big Flat’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Strand Knob, about 1,840 ft, 9 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pitkin Limestone, Fayetteville Shale (including the Wedington Sandstone member), and Batesville Sandstone (including the Hindsville Limestone Member) (sandstone, shale, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Big Flat reaches the Gulf of America by way of Short Creek, Big Creek, the Buffalo, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,030 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Flat; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Flat has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Big Flat normally reaches 60° and falls to 38°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 10°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.55 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Marshall, 15 miles west-southwest, 340 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
