The Carter 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
88° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 87° in 1938.
Carter’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 960 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Slipdown Mountain, about 1,370 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paluxy Sand (sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
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 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Carter reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Carter Creek, the Clear Fork Trinity, the West Fork Trinity and the Trinity: about 550 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake and Benbrook Lake.
270 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Carter; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carter has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Carter normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 85°, in 1989; the record low 18°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.46 in, fell in 1923.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Weatherford, 11 miles south, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
