The Poteau 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.
Poteau’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 1,560 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sugar Loaf Mountain, about 2,570 ft, 9 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Savanna Formation (shale, sandstone), 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 10×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Poteau reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Poteau, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 960 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 Poteau; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Poteau 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 Poteau 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, 9 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
