The Ashland 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
Chance of showers; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
21° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 22° in 1940.
Ashland’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 62×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, lignite. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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. 3 smaller units 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 Ashland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bucket Creek, Antoine Creek, Black Lake Bayou, Saline Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 340 river miles.
Lake on the way: Black Lake.
160 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ashland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ashland normally reaches 69° and falls to 45°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 25°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Natchitoches Area threaded record (Natchitoches #2, 23 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
