The Fountain Lake 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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7.22 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1875. The next wettest, 4.59 inches, fell in 1958.
Fountain Lake’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Smith Pinnacle, about 1,880 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Womble Shale (Middle Ordovician) (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Chert, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 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. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Fountain Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Saline, the Alum Fork Saline, the Saline, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 630 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Saline.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fountain Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fountain Lake has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Fountain Lake normally reaches 63° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 1955; the record low 16°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 3.02 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1875 at Hot Springs 1 NNE, 10 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
