The Fairfield Bay 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
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4.90 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 4.29 inches, fell in 1987.
Fairfield Bay’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 1,200 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Walnut Knob, about 1,570 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bloyd Shale, and Prairie Grove Member of the Hale Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 20×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 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 Fairfield Bay reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dave Creek, the Little Red, the White River and the Mississippi: about 900 river miles.
Lake on the way: Greers Ferry Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairfield Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairfield Bay has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Fairfield Bay normally reaches 61° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Greers Ferry Dam, 16 miles east-southeast, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
