The Belton 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
Sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1983. Next is 25° in 2019.
Belton’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Trapnell Point, about 960 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undivided parts of Washita and Fredericksberg Groups (claystone, limestone), 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 40×. 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, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, 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 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 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 Belton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Nolan Creek, the Leon, the Little River and the Brazos: about 430 river miles.
320 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Belton has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Belton normally reaches 70° and falls to 46°. The record high is 89°, in 1989; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.32 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1983 at Killeen, 13 miles west, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
