The Keene 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
5.53 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 3.40 inches, fell in 1914.
Keene’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Woodbine Formation (sandstone-mudstone), 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 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Marlstone, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
A raindrop that lands in Keene reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Turkey Creek, North Fork Chambers Creek, Chambers Creek, Richland Creek and the Trinity: about 450 river miles.
Lake on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake.
140 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Keene; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Keene has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Keene normally reaches 67° and falls to 44°. The record high is 90°, in 1989; the record low 21°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.49 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Cleburne, 7 miles southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
