The Butterfield 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 80° in 1911.
Butterfield’s center stands about 1,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 1,560 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.5 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 Butterfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pogue Creek, Shoal Creek, the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,230 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 Butterfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Butterfield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Butterfield normally reaches 58° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Cassville 1 NE, 5 miles southeast, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
