The Gonzales 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
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
21° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 23° in 1970.
Gonzales’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Iron Peak, about 550 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Gonzales reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tinsley Creek, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 170 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gonzales; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gonzales has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gonzales normally reaches 74° and falls to 49°. The record high is 90°, in 2020; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Luling, 17 miles northwest, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
