The Hillsboro 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.
3.74 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1903. The next wettest, 2.79 inches, fell in 2004.
Hillsboro’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eagle Ford Formation (black-shale, siltstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
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 Hillsboro reaches the Gulf of America by way of Aquilla Creek and the Brazos: about 450 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hillsboro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Hillsboro has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 39 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Hillsboro normally reaches 69° and falls to 44°. The record high is 90°, in 1983; the record low 20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Hillsboro, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.