The Cottonwood Shores 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
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 24° in 2019.
Cottonwood Shores’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Howell Mountain, about 1,660 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Town Mountain Granite, from the Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Proterozoic, 542 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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. 6 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 Cottonwood Shores reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Colorado: about 380 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Marble Falls.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cottonwood Shores; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cottonwood Shores has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cottonwood Shores normally reaches 69° and falls to 48°. The record high is 86°, in 2007; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Burnet Municipal Airport, 14 miles north-northeast, 440 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
