The Horseshoe Bend 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
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4.51 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1923. The next wettest, 4.10 inches, fell in 1957.
Horseshoe Bend’s center stands about 870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wallace Knob, about 1,120 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Powell Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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.
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 Horseshoe Bend reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bens Creek, the Strawberry, the Black River, the White River and the Mississippi: about 990 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Horseshoe Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Horseshoe Bend has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Horseshoe Bend normally reaches 59° and falls to 35°. The record high is 85°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.80 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Evening Shade 1 NNE, 13 miles southeast, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
