The Gillham 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 cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
10.45 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 3.65 inches, fell in 1969.
Gillham’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Whiskey Peak, about 1,660 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Stanley Shale (black-shale, sandstone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.2 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 Gillham reaches the Gulf of America by way of Almond Creek, the Cossatot, the Little River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 610 river miles.
390 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gillham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gillham has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gillham normally reaches 65° and falls to 41°. The record high is 87°, in 1955; the record low 17°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.21 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 from the Dequeen Area threaded record (De Queen Sevier County Airport, 10 miles south-southwest, 410 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
