The China Spring 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1901. The next wettest, 2.96 inches, fell in 1907.
China Spring’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, marl. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 1 smaller unit 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 China Spring reaches the Gulf of America by way of Live Oak Creek, the South Bosque and the Brazos: about 430 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waco Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of China Spring; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
China Spring has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 China Spring normally reaches 69° and falls to 46°. The record high is 91°, in 1989; the record low 21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 from the Waco Area threaded record (Waco Regional Airport, 5 miles east-southeast, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
