The Sperry 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.
87° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 1911.
Sperry’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holmes Peak, about 1,020 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
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 49×. 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, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. 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 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million 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 Sperry reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hominy Creek, Bird Creek, the Verdigris, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,090 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 Sperry; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sperry 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 Sperry 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, 10 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.