The Earth 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
1° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 7° in 2014.
Earth’s center stands about 3,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,660 ft to 3,750 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
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 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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Earth reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos, the Double Mountain Fork Brazos and the Brazos: about 1,250 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 Earth; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Earth has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 8 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Earth normally reaches 62° and falls to 34°. The record high is 83°, in 2025; the record low 1°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 at Olton, 16 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
