The Fort Davis 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.
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
95° on Nov. 16, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 85° in 2025.
Fort Davis’s center stands about 4,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,780 ft to 5,610 ft, a difference of 830 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Paradise Mountain, about 7,700 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial fan deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Trachyte. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Trachyte, rhyolite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
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 Fort Davis reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chihuahua Creek, Limpia Creek, Toyah Creek, the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 1,040 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
320 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Davis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Davis has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in June; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fort Davis normally reaches 69° and falls to 38°. The record high is 83°, in 2017; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1918.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Fort Davis, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
