The Dickens 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
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
92° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 86° in 1927.
Dickens’s center stands about 2,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,260 ft to 2,810 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mackenzie Peak, about 2,860 ft, 2 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dockum Group, undivided (shale), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million 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 Dickens reaches the Gulf of America by way of J-2 Creek, Croton Creek, the Salt Fork Brazos and the Brazos: about 1,030 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Possum Kingdom Lake and Lake Granbury.
550 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dickens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dickens has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Dickens normally reaches 66° and falls to 36°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low 10°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Spur, 10 miles south-southwest, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
