The Branch 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
89° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 88° in 1955.
Branch’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Calico Mountain, about 1,200 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
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 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Branch reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sixmile Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 890 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 Branch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Branch has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Branch normally reaches 63° and falls to 38°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 16°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Booneville 3 SSE, 15 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
