The Elk City 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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89° on Nov. 17, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 85° in 1988.
Elk City’s center stands about 1,920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,860 ft to 2,060 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Doxey Formation or Doxey Shale (shale, siltstone), 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.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Elk City reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Elk Creek, Elk Creek, the North Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,250 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 Elk City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elk City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Elk City normally reaches 62° and falls to 37°. The record high is 85°, in 1988; the record low 12°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Elk City 4 W, 6 miles west-southwest, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
