The Pearcy 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.
15° on Nov. 12, 1991, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 16° in 2019.
Pearcy’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 790 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sharp Top Mountain, about 1,670 ft, 15 miles west.
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 3 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.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 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 Pearcy reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lost Creek, Little Mazarn Creek, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 630 river miles.
410 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pearcy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pearcy has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Pearcy normally reaches 62° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 16°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.70 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Blakely Mountain Dam, 11 miles north-northeast, 210 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.