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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
−3° on Nov. 16, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is −2° in 2019.
Waco’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 Waco reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Creek, the West Fork Big Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,920 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek Lake.
1,170 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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 28 inches of water.
On November 14 Waco normally reaches 51° and falls to 26°. The record high is 84°, in 1999; the record low 1°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.19 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Surprise, 16 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
