The Little Rock 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1875. Next is 20° in 1940.
Little Rock’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 230 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shinall Mountain, about 1,080 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jackfork Sandstone (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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.
Chert, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Little Rock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rock Creek, Fourche Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 740 river miles.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Little Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Little Rock has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Little Rock normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 22°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.57 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1875 from the Little Rock Area threaded record (Little Rock Airport Adams Field, 3 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
