The Fordoche 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.
Sunny
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Mostly sunny; warmer
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24° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 25° in 1950.
Fordoche’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 80 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 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.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 11 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 Fordoche reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sullivan Bayou, the Lower Grand, the Chopin Chute, the Bayou Grosbec, Little Texas Bayou, Fourmile Bayou, the Bayou Cherami, the Bayou Chene and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 120 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Verret and Lake Palourde.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fordoche; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fordoche has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in January. About 58 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fordoche normally reaches 71° and falls to 50°. The record high is 89°, in 1951; the record low 29°, in 1975. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 1976.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at New Roads 5 NE, 18 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
