The Cross Plains 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.
Showers likely
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89° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 87° in 2005.
Cross Plains’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,650 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is West Caddo Peak, about 2,060 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antlers Sand (sandstone, claystone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. 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: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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. 2 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 Cross Plains reaches the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, Pecan Bayou and the Colorado: about 600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls, Brownwood Lake and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cross Plains; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cross Plains has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 29 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Cross Plains normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1989; the record low 18°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Putnam, 17 miles north, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
