Aquatic. Dark dorsal bands toward head becoming checkerboard toward tail. Individual variation in band and background color: browns, tans, reds, and yellows. Belly mottled with dark crescents. 
Subspecies: N. s. pleuralis (Midland Watersnake) and N. s. sipedon (Northern Watersnake)
Arkansas Herpetological Atlas 2019
This species is represented by 903 records from 32 sources: 759 museum (
), 0 literature (
), 0 research (
), and 109 observation (
), with 35 additional Trauth et al. (2004) locality points remaining unsourced (
). It has been museum vouchered for 59 of 75 counties (), with 4 additional counties having other forms of reported occurrence (). Years of collection range from 1897 to present.
This species commonly inhabits streams in the Interior Highlands, with a patchy distribution in the South Central Plains and Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Many of the records outside of the Interior Highlands are historic or were plotted by Trauth et al. (2004) and remain unsourced. Powell et al. (2016) show the N. s. sipedon subspecies (■) edging into the extreme northwest corner of the state.
