The Oppelo 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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85° on Nov. 13, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 84° in 1941.
Oppelo’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fourche Pinnacle, about 1,260 ft, 7 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Oppelo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 800 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 Oppelo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oppelo has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Oppelo normally reaches 63° and falls to 39°. The record high is 84°, in 1964; the record low 16°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Morrilton, 4 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
