The Bentonville 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.
11° on Nov. 13, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 13° in 1911.
Bentonville’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Brier Knob, about 1,220 ft, 9 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 454 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 3 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 Bentonville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Isaacs Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,550 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bentonville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bentonville has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bentonville normally reaches 56° and falls to 34°. The record high is 81°, in 1955; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.72 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Maysville Wastewater Treatment Plant, 10 miles west-southwest, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.