The Kemp 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 cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
6.05 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 3.35 inches, fell in 1994.
Kemp’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Kemp reaches the Gulf of America by way of Skinner Creek, Pepper Creek, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 790 river miles.
650 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kemp; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kemp has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Kemp normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 19°, in 1908. The most rain on this date, 3.30 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Bonham 3 NNE, 14 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
