The Houston 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.
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85° on Nov. 13, 1955, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1919. Next is 84° in 1941.
Houston’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wildcat Mountain, about 1,400 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Atoka Formation - Middle part (sandstone, shale), 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 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, 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 Houston reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Fork Mill Creek, the Fourche LaFave, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 770 river miles.
Lake on the way: Murray 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 Houston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Houston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Houston normally reaches 63° and falls to 39°. The record high is 84°, in 1964; the record low 16°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1919 at Morrilton, 9 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
