The Brazos 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
91° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 89° in 1950.
Brazos’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Whit Mountain, about 1,300 ft, 12 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mingus Formation (black-shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Brazos reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Brazos: about 620 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Granbury.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brazos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brazos has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Brazos normally reaches 68° and falls to 43°. The record high is 87°, in 1989; the record low 19°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 2.36 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Mineral Wells Airport, 9 miles north-northeast, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
