The Benavides 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.
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4.64 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1962. The next wettest, 3.04 inches, fell in 1995.
Benavides’s center stands about 380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Goliad Formation (clay, sandstone), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.6 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 Benavides reaches the Gulf of America by way of Santa Gertrudis Creek and San Fernando Creek: about 55 river miles.
Often dry. About 70% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benavides; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benavides has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 43° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Benavides normally reaches 77° and falls to 52°. The record high is 91°, in 2005; the record low 25°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.58 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1962 at Benavides #2, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
