The Shidler 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.
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88° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1922. Next is 86° in 2016.
Shidler’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 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 Shidler reaches the Gulf of America by way of Salt Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,190 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 Shidler; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shidler has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Shidler normally reaches 63° and falls to 36°. The record high is 81°, in 2025; the record low 13°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.85 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1922 at Ralston, 20 miles south-southwest, 340 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
