The Cave Springs 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
3.64 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1890. The next wettest, 3.43 inches, fell in 1922.
Cave Springs’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Sequoyah, about 1,730 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Boone Formation (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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 24 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 Cave Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Osage Creek, the Illinois, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,110 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake, Tenkiller Ferry 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 Cave Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cave Springs has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cave Springs normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 79°, in 1909; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.62 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Fayetteville Experiment Sta, 12 miles south-southeast, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
