The Mansfield 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.
87° on Nov. 14, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 87° in 2016.
Mansfield’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Poteau Mountain, about 2,680 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Atoka Formation - Upper part (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 10×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 Mansfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Prairie Creek, the James Fork, the Poteau, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 990 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark 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 Mansfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mansfield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Mansfield normally reaches 62° and falls to 38°. The record high is 87°, in 1955; the record low 12°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.33 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Waldron, 13 miles southeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.