The Abilene 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
90° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 87° in 1911.
Abilene’s center stands about 1,720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,670 ft to 1,770 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buzzard Mountain, about 2,380 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clear Fork Group (claystone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 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.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 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 Abilene reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cedar Creek, Elm Creek, the Clear Fork and the Brazos: about 950 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Possum Kingdom Lake, Lake Granbury and Fort Phantom Hill Lake.
550 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Abilene; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Abilene has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Abilene normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 from the Abilene Area threaded record (Abilene Regional Airport, 4 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
