The Fayetteville 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.
7.20 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 5.33 inches, fell in 2007.
Fayetteville’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fleming Formation (clay, sandstone), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sand. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Fayetteville reaches the Gulf of America by way of Allen Creek, Cummins Creek and the Colorado: about 160 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fayetteville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fayetteville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fayetteville normally reaches 74° and falls to 48°. The record high is 89°, in 2007; the record low 26°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Columbus, 16 miles south-southeast, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.