The Alvarado 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
20° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1985. Next is 21° in 1986.
Alvarado’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Caddo Peak, about 1,030 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Woodbine Formation (sandstone-mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 11 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 Alvarado reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Chambers Creek, Chambers Creek, Richland Creek and the Trinity: about 440 river miles.
Lake on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake.
140 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alvarado; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alvarado has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alvarado normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 89°, in 1989; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1985 at Burleson, 10 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
