The Mounds 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 cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Sunny
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
87° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 1911.
Mounds’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dude Ranch Hill, about 1,050 ft, 10 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Coffeyville and Checkerboard Formations or Checkerboard Limestone (shale, sandstone, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. 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.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Mounds reaches the Gulf of America by way of Middle Duck Creek, Duck Creek, Snake Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,080 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 Mounds; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mounds has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 9 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Mounds normally reaches 62° and falls to 40°. The record high is 79°, in 2020; the record low 13°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.72 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Tulsa Area threaded record (Tulsa International Airport, 25 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
