The Alderson 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 86° in 2025.
Alderson’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is New State Mountain, about 1,340 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows McAlester Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 2 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 Alderson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mud Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,040 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 Alderson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alderson has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alderson normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 3.39 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Mcalester Regional Airport, 5 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
