The Gray 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.
20° on Nov. 16, 1940, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 24° in 1969.
Gray’s center stands about 17 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 50 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 12 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 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.
Gray has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 71 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gray normally reaches 73° and falls to 52°. The record high is 88°, in 1909; the record low 27°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 3.50 in, fell in 1914.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Thibodaux 4 SE, 4 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.