The Simpson 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.
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20° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 21° in 1950.
Simpson’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Williamson Creek Member (silt, siltstone, clay), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Silt, siltstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Simpson reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Calcasieu: about 190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Mud Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Simpson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Simpson has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Simpson normally reaches 69° and falls to 45°. The record high is 89°, in 1921; the record low 26°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 3.55 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Leesville, 15 miles west-southwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
