The Commerce 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.14 inches, fell in 1978.
Commerce’s center stands about 540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Navarro Group, undivided (clay, sand), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 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 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.
Clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 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 Commerce reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Sulphur, the Sulphur, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 690 river miles.
Lake on the way: Wright Patman Lake.
320 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Commerce; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Commerce has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 46 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Commerce normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 87°, in 2005; the record low 22°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.82 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Sulphur Springs, 17 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
