The Goldthwaite 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
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
18° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is 20° in 2019.
Goldthwaite’s center stands about 1,560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,400 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Long Pompey Mountain, about 1,760 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Walnut Clay (limestone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million 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 Goldthwaite reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Bull Creek, Bull Creek and the Colorado: about 500 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Goldthwaite; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goldthwaite has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 30 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Goldthwaite normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 1989; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 3.11 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Goldthwaite 1 WSW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
