The Clay 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.41 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1882. The next wettest, 3.40 inches, fell in 1998.
Clay’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 300 ft, a difference of 110 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 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.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sand. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Clay reaches the Gulf of America by way of Yegua Creek and the Brazos: about 250 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clay has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Clay normally reaches 71° and falls to 50°. The record high is 94°, in 1921; the record low 27°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.64 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1882 from the College Station Area threaded record (College Station Easterwood Field, 14 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
