The Clayton 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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5.85 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1892. The next wettest, 5.26 inches, fell in 1929.
Clayton’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 70 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 3 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 11 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 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 Clayton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Tensas, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 230 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Atchafalaya.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clayton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Clayton normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 87°, in 1921; the record low 22°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 4.29 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Natchez, 15 miles southeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
