The London 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.
4.07 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1882. The next wettest, 4.00 inches, fell in 1978.
London’s center stands about 380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 830 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huckleberry Mountain, about 1,980 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows McAlester Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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 London reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Murray Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of London; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
London has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 London normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.82 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1882 from the Russellville Area threaded record (Russellville Municipal Airport, 10 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.