The Waco 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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5.86 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 4.24 inches, fell in 2015.
Waco’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 850 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Riverton Formation, Burgner Formation (shale, siltstone, mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Waco reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Spring, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,180 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waco has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Waco normally reaches 59° and falls to 38°. The record high is 79°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Joplin Regional Airport, 9 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
