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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3.59 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1960. The next wettest, 2.87 inches, fell in 2011.
Benton’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 320 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackson Hill, about 610 ft, 6 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gulfian Series (clay, sand), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Paleocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 0.8 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 Caney Creek, the Little River, the Right Hand Chute Little, Iron Mines Creek, the Saint Francis and the Mississippi: about 1,000 river miles.
690 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 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Benton normally reaches 57° and falls to 37°. The record high is 80°, in 1964; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.34 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Cape Girardeau Faa Airport, 9 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
