The Prairie Grove 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
4.52 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1949. The next wettest, 3.91 inches, fell in 1993.
Prairie Grove’s center stands about 1,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,490 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Everett Mountain, about 2,230 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Boone Formation (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 20×. 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, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.4 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 Prairie Grove reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Illinois, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,110 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake, Tenkiller Ferry 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 Prairie Grove; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prairie Grove has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Prairie Grove normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 14°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.99 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Fayetteville Drake Field, 9 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
