The Hot Springs 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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17° on Nov. 15, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1927. Next is 17° in 2019.
Hot Springs’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 3,290 ft, a difference of 1,990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Sandymush Bald, about 4,840 ft, 14 miles south.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, metasandstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Hot Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Spring Creek, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,760 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hot Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hot Springs has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Hot Springs normally reaches 61° and falls to 36°. The record high is 82°, in 1989; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1927 at Hot Springs, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
