The Oark 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
13° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1986. Next is 19° in 2014.
Oark’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 2,010 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wahzhazhe Summit, about 2,560 ft, 13 miles north-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 4 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 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. 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 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.8 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 Oark reaches the Gulf of America by way of Estep Creek, the Mulberry, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 940 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 Oark; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oark has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1986 at Clarksville 6 NE, 15 miles southeast, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
