The Turkey Creek 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.
22° on Nov. 17, 2006, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 23° in 2019.
Turkey Creek’s center stands about 130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 200 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Intermediate Terraces (clay, silt), 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.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million 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.
A raindrop that lands in Turkey Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Boggy Bayou, the East Fork Bayou Nezpique, the Bayou Nezpique and the Mermentau: about 150 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Arthur.
65 miles of the trip are on the Bayou Nezpique.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Turkey Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Turkey Creek 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 Turkey Creek 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, 15 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.