The Arkansas City 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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84° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 80° in 2005.
Arkansas City’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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 Arkansas City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Walnut, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,260 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray 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 Arkansas City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Arkansas City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Arkansas City normally reaches 59° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 2020; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 2022.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Winfield Strother Field Airport, 7 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
