The McClave 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
−9° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is −5° in 1993.
McClave’s center stands about 3,860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,750 ft to 3,960 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, Greenhorn Limestone, and Graneros Shale (shale, limestone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 32×. 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, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 McClave reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,720 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
830 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McClave; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McClave has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 10 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 13 inches of water.
On November 14 McClave normally reaches 59° and falls to 27°. The record high is 79°, in 2007; the record low 2°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.10 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at John Martin Dam, 6 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
