The Houston 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
Showers likely
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
7.21 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1888. The next wettest, 6.69 inches, fell in 1998.
Houston’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 20 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beaumont Formation, areas predominantly clay (clay, silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 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 Houston reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Whiteoak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Houston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Houston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 46° in January. About 56 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Houston normally reaches 73° and falls to 54°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 31°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.76 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Houston William P Hobby Airport, 9 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
