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.
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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 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bradys Bluff, about 1,140 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cambrian (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million 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 28×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 3 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 Silver Creek, 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, 200 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
