The Big Sandy 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
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.97 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1883. The next wettest, 4.54 inches, fell in 1987.
Big Sandy’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Underwood Mountain, about 690 ft, 12 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Big Sandy reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hills Creek and the Sabine: about 380 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Toledo Bend Reservoir and Sabine Lake.
150 miles of the trip are on the Sabine.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Sandy; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Sandy has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Big Sandy normally reaches 68° and falls to 47°. The record high is 88°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1883 from the Tyler Area threaded record (Tyler Pounds Field, 23 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
