The Idalou 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
90° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 88° in 2017.
Idalou’s center stands about 3,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 3,220 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
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 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 2 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.
Idalou has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Idalou normally reaches 64° and falls to 37°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 4°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 from the Lubbock Area threaded record (Lubbock International Airport, 8 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
