The Alto 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
Showers likely; cooler
Showers likely
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
21° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 25° in 1950.
Alto’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 530 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bradford Mountain, about 750 ft, 8 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Weches Formation (sandstone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. 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. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.1 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 Alto reaches the Gulf of America by way of Alto Branch, Larrison Creek and the Neches: about 280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Sabine Lake and B A Steinhagen Lake.
120 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alto; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alto has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alto normally reaches 66° and falls to 47°. The record high is 89°, in 1955; the record low 24°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.60 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Rusk, 12 miles north-northwest, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
