The Fifth Ward 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
22° on Nov. 17, 2006, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 23° in 2019.
Fifth Ward’s center stands about 70 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 120 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
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 4 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.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
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.
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 Fifth Ward reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dauterive Lake, the Bayou Teche and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Dauterive Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fifth Ward; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fifth Ward has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 62 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fifth Ward normally reaches 70° and falls to 46°. The record high is 86°, in 2005; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 3.41 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Bunkie, 12 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
