The Alexandria 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
Showers likely; warmer
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
12.82 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 4.80 inches, fell in 1929.
Alexandria’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 170 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Natural Levees (silt, clay), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, siltstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 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 Alexandria reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hynson Bayou, the Bayou Latanier, the Bayou Teche and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 220 river miles.
Lake on the way: Dauterive Lake.
130 miles of the trip are on the Bayou Latanier.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alexandria; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alexandria has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alexandria normally reaches 68° and falls to 47°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.20 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Alexandria, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
