The Big Wells 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
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 27° in 2011.
Big Wells’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Loma Vista Hill, about 730 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows El Pico Clay (claystone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Claystone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 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 Wells reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Arroyo Negro and the Nueces: about 250 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Corpus Christi.
180 miles of the trip are on the Nueces.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Wells; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Wells has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Big Wells normally reaches 75° and falls to 48°. The record high is 93°, in 1951; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Carrizo Springs 3 S, 19 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
