The Goldsmith 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
89° on Nov. 17, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 86° in 1963.
Goldsmith’s center stands about 3,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,080 ft to 3,200 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
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 50×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Chemical. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, marl. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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.
Goldsmith has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Goldsmith normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 13°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 2004.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 from the Midland-Odessa Area threaded record (Midland International Airport, 24 miles east, 290 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
