The McArthur 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 cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
9° on Nov. 14, 1920, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1914. Next is 9° in 1933.
McArthur’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Peck Hill, about 1,100 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
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 45×. 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 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 McArthur reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Puncheon Fork, the Elk Fork, Raccoon Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,750 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 McArthur; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McArthur has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 21 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 McArthur normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 75°, in 1931; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 2024.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1914 at Jackson 3 NW, 17 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
