The Howe 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 sunny
Mostly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
3.64 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1946. The next wettest, 3.33 inches, fell in 1957.
Howe’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugar Loaf Mountain, about 2,570 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
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 11×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Howe reaches the Gulf of America by way of Morris Creek, the Poteau, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 980 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 Howe; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Howe has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Howe normally reaches 64° and falls to 40°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 16°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Wister 3 S, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
