The Dalhart 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.
Chance of showers
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87° on Nov. 17, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 85° in 1973.
Dalhart’s center stands about 3,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,870 ft to 4,010 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
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 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 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 Dalhart reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rita Blanca Creek, Punta de Agua Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
630 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dalhart; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dalhart has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 16 inches of water.
On November 14 Dalhart normally reaches 61° and falls to 30°. The record high is 84°, in 2025; the record low 5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Dalhart Faa Airport, 3 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
