The El Dorado 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.
Sunny
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
7.10 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 4.51 inches, fell in 1987.
El Dorado’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 310 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claibourne Group (sand, clay), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, clay. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 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 El Dorado reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flat Creek, Haynes Creek, Smackover Creek, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 470 river miles.
250 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Dorado; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Dorado has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Dorado normally reaches 66° and falls to 42°. The record high is 87°, in 1925; the record low 21°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at El Dorado Goodwin Field, 9 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
