The Bear Creek 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
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
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22° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 24° in 2005.
Bear Creek’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jack Mountain, about 1,480 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glen Rose Limestone (limestone, marlstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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 Bear Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bear Creek, Onion Creek and the Colorado: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bear Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bear Creek has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bear Creek normally reaches 69° and falls to 48°. The record high is 85°, in 1988; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Dripping Springs 6 E, 3 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
