The Optima 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.
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
86° on Nov. 12, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1910. Next is 85° in 2025.
Optima’s center stands about 3,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,860 ft to 3,080 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pleistocene and Pliocene deposits, undifferentiated (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 41×. 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, coarse-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.4 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 Optima reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pony Creek, the Beaver, the North Canadian, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Canton Lake, 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 Optima; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Optima has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 17 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Optima normally reaches 60° and falls to 30°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.37 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1910 at Goodwell Research Station, 19 miles southwest, 270 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
