The Altus 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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94° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 89° in 1944.
Altus’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,340 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Byrd Mountain, about 1,920 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hennessey Group (shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. 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. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Altus reaches the Gulf of America by way of Stinking Creek, the North Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,140 river miles.
960 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Altus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Altus has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Altus normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Tipton 4 S Mesonet, 18 miles southeast, 130 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
