The Buna 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.
26° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 29° in 1991.
Buna’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lissie Formation (silt, sand, clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 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 Buna reaches the Gulf of America by way of Goode Branch, Gum Slough, Cow Bayou and the Sabine: about 75 river miles.
Lake on the way: Sabine Lake.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Buna; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buna has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 64 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Buna normally reaches 70° and falls to 47°. The record high is 85°, in 2005; the record low 26°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Orange 9 N, 20 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.