The Cotulla 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
26° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 29° in 2008.
Cotulla’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 380 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Laredo Formation (sandstone, claystone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
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 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.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Cotulla reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Mustang Creek and the Nueces: about 210 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Corpus Christi.
140 miles of the trip are on the Nueces.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cotulla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cotulla has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cotulla normally reaches 76° and falls to 53°. The record high is 94°, in 1902; the record low 26°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 1923.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Cotulla La Salle County Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
