The Moffett 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.
87° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1882. Next is 86° in 1955.
Moffett’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Winset Mountain, about 1,090 ft, 15 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (fine-detrital), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 27×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million 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.
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 Moffett reaches the Gulf of America by way of Garrison Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 930 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 Moffett; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moffett has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Moffett normally reaches 64° and falls to 40°. The record high is 82°, in 2011; the record low 19°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 2.81 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1882 from the Fort Smith Area threaded record (Fort Smith Regional Airport, 6 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.