The Hot Springs 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 14, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 2006.
Hot Springs’s center stands about 2,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,880 ft to 3,730 ft, a difference of 1,850 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 4,240 ft, 6 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moccasin or Bays Formation through Blackford Formation (shale), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 7×. 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: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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. 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 Hot Springs reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cedar Creek, the Jackson and the James: about 390 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hot Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hot Springs has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 25 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Hot Springs normally reaches 53° and falls to 32°. The record high is 74°, in 1973; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.44 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hot Springs, here, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
