The Buffalo 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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82° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 1999.
Buffalo’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver City Dome, about 1,120 ft, 6 miles west-northwest.
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, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Buffalo reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Buffalo Creek, Buffalo Creek, the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Oologah Lake, 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 Buffalo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buffalo has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Buffalo normally reaches 59° and falls to 36°. The record high is 80°, in 1899; the record low 10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.73 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Chanute Martin Johnson Airport, 12 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
