The Ratcliff 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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13° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 15° in 1940.
Ratcliff’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Turkey Knob, about 1,280 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 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 Ratcliff reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Creek, Sixmile Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 880 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 Ratcliff; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ratcliff has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Ratcliff normally reaches 62° and falls to 39°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.78 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Subiaco, 14 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
