The Russell 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.
87° on Nov. 13, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 85° in 1964.
Russell’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Russell Mountain, about 740 ft, 2 miles north-northwest.
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 35×. 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: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.7 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 Russell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Mingo Creek, the Little Red, the White River and the Mississippi: about 820 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Russell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Russell has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Russell normally reaches 62° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1964; the record low 16°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.77 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Searcy, 13 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.