The Mountainburg 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.
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3.33 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1938. The next wettest, 3.11 inches, fell in 1957.
Mountainburg’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Knob, about 2,350 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Atoka Formation, undivided (sandstone, black-shale), 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 11×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 Mountainburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of Frog Bayou, Cottonwood Slough, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 930 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 Mountainburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mountainburg has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Mountainburg normally reaches 61° and falls to 37°. The record high is 85°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.73 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Mountainburg 2 NE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
