The Hemphill 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 sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
17° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 20° in 1916.
Hemphill’s center stands about 290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 340 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Forse Mountain, about 600 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Yegua Formation (claystone, sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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. 4 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 Hemphill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Travis Branch, Housen Bayou and the Sabine: about 190 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Toledo Bend Reservoir and Sabine Lake.
140 miles of the trip are on the Sabine.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hemphill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hemphill has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hemphill normally reaches 70° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 2005; the record low 24°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.82 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at San Augustine, 20 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
