The Calico Rock 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.
4.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1904. The next wettest, 4.03 inches, fell in 1958.
Calico Rock’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 320 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Push Mountain, about 1,300 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Peter Sanstone and Everton Formation (Middle Ordovician) (sandstone, dolostone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 20 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 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.
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 Calico Rock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Fairgrounds Creek, the White River and the Mississippi: about 970 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 Calico Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Calico Rock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Calico Rock normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 82°, in 2007; the record low 13°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Calico Rock 2 WSW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.