The Bull Shoals 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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4.18 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 3.23 inches, fell in 1993.
Bull Shoals’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Horseshoe Mountain, about 1,350 ft, 8 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cotter and Jefferson City Dolomites (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 0.6 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 Bull Shoals reaches the Gulf of America by way of 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 Bull Shoals; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bull Shoals has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 51 inches of water.
On November 14 Bull Shoals normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 11°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.60 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Mountain Home 1 NNW, 11 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
