The Castroville 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.
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
25° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1975. Next is 25° in 2018.
Castroville’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cedar Hill, about 1,200 ft, 11 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 1 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 Castroville reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Medina, the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 270 river miles.
210 miles of the trip are on the San Antonio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Castroville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Castroville has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Castroville normally reaches 74° and falls to 48°. The record high is 91°, in 1983; the record low 25°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1975 at Hondo Municipal Airport, 18 miles west, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
