The Ball 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 sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
12.82 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 4.80 inches, fell in 1929.
Ball’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 270 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows High Terraces (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Silt, siltstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.3 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 Ball reaches the Gulf of America by way of Flagon Creek, the Little River, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 260 river miles.
Lake on the way: Catahoula Lake.
100 miles of the trip are on the Atchafalaya.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ball; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ball has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ball normally reaches 68° and falls to 47°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Alexandria, 7 miles south-southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
