The Cleburne 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.
5.53 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 3.40 inches, fell in 1914.
Cleburne’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Caddo Peak, about 1,030 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Grayson Marl and Main Street Limestone, undivided (marlstone, limestone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 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 58×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Cleburne reaches the Gulf of America by way of McAnear Creek, Buffalo Creek, the Nolan and the Brazos: about 500 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cleburne; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cleburne has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cleburne normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 90°, in 1989; the record low 21°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.49 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Cleburne, 3 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.