The Pocahontas 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.
9° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is 13° in 2019.
Pocahontas’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crum Mountain, about 740 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
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 56×. 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: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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 Pocahontas reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Hatchie, Porters Creek, Cypress Creek and the Mississippi: about 960 river miles.
800 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pocahontas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pocahontas has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Pocahontas normally reaches 62° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1985; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.73 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Selmer, 14 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.