The Bluff 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.
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
83° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 83° in 1999.
Bluff City’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 110 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 6 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.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Bluff City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bluff Creek, the Chikaskia, the Salt Fork Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,310 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 Bluff City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bluff City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 11 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 33 inches of water.
On November 14 Bluff City normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 1973; the record low 9°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.80 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Anthony, 10 miles west-northwest, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
