The Alva 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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85° on Nov. 12, 1894, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 2016.
Alva’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,290 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedar Hill Sandstone (sandstone, shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
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 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 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 Alva reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Salt Fork Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Great Salt Plains Reservoir, 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 Alva; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alva has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Kiowa, 18 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
