The Scipio 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 86° in 2025.
Scipio’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 660 ft to 900 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lamar Mountain, about 1,110 ft, 11 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Thurman Sandstone, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Scipio reaches the Gulf of America by way of Scipio Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,040 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 Scipio; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Scipio has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Scipio normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 83°, in 1999; the record low 19°, in 1963. The most rain on this date, 3.39 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Mcalester Regional Airport, 15 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
