The Driftwood 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
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
22° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1984. Next is 24° in 2005.
Driftwood’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,220 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Sharp, about 1,510 ft, 11 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glen Rose Limestone (limestone, marlstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Clay, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Driftwood reaches the Gulf of America by way of Onion Creek and the Colorado: about 330 river miles.
270 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Driftwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Driftwood has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Driftwood normally reaches 69° and falls to 48°. The record high is 85°, in 1988; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1984 at Dripping Springs 6 E, 7 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
