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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
21° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 23° in 1940.
Benton’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 280 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Hills, about 410 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie 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.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, lignite. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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 Black Bayou, Cypress Bayou, Red Chute Bayou, Loggy Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 430 river miles.
Lake on the way: Cypress Bayou Reservoir.
230 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
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 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Benton normally reaches 68° and falls to 46°. The record high is 85°, in 1989; the record low 24°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.67 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Shreveport Area threaded record (Shreveport Airport, 17 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
