The Claude 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.
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85° on Nov. 16, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 85° in 2025.
Claude’s center stands about 3,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,310 ft to 3,430 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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 42×. 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, less than 2.6 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
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 Claude reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mulberry Creek, the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,300 river miles.
1,040 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Claude; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Claude has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Claude normally reaches 62° and falls to 34°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low 5°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.09 in, fell in 1924.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 from the Amarillo Area threaded record (Amarillo Airport, 22 miles west-northwest, 210 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
