The Elton 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
25° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 25° in 2019.
Elton’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 100 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Prairie Terraces (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 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 Elton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Bayou Blue, the Bayou Nezpique and the Mermentau: about 130 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Arthur.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Elton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 62 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elton normally reaches 69° and falls to 47°. The record high is 87°, in 2005; the record low 26°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.76 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Oberlin Fire Tower, 10 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
