The Houston 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 70° in 2012.
Houston’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Hammer Bluff, about 1,280 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle and Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 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.
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 Houston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Root and the Mississippi: about 1,690 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Houston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Houston has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Houston normally reaches 45° and falls to 25°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.32 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Rushford, 10 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
