The West Plains 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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85° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 84° in 1989.
West Plains’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Payne Knob, about 1,290 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smithville Dolomite, Powell Dolomite, Cotter Dolomite, Jefferson City Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 24 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 West Plains reaches the Gulf of America by way of Burton Creek, South Fork Howell Creek, the Warm Fork, the Spring, the Black River, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,050 river miles.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Plains; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Plains has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 West Plains normally reaches 57° and falls to 34°. The record high is 79°, in 1999; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.85 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at West Plains, here, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
