The Gibsland 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
Showers likely
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
18° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 23° in 1997.
Gibsland’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Driskill Mountain, about 560 ft, 12 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 8 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, marl. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. 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 1 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Gibsland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Black Lake Creek, Leatherman Creek, Black Lake Bayou, Saline Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 390 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 Gibsland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gibsland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 61 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gibsland normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 84°, in 1983; the record low 26°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Bienville 3 NE, 13 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
