The Mena 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
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
5.57 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1890. The next wettest, 5.28 inches, fell in 1958.
Mena’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 940 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Fork Mountain, about 2,630 ft, 12 miles 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 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.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 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 Mena reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ward Creek, Prairie Creek, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 740 river miles.
520 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mena has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Mena normally reaches 61° and falls to 38°. The record high is 84°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.65 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 at Mena, 3 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
