The Benton 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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Showers likely
6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 11° in 2018.
Benton’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,380 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sumner Group (shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Benton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, the Whitewater, the Walnut, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,350 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 Benton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Wichita Colonel James Jabara Airport, 7 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
