The Lipan 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
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
89° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is 87° in 1921.
Lipan’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 840 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Mountains, about 1,370 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lazy Bend Formation (black-shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. 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: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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 Lipan reaches the Gulf of America by way of Weaver Branch, Kickapoo Creek and the Brazos: about 600 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Granbury.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lipan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lipan has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lipan normally reaches 69° and falls to 42°. The record high is 87°, in 1989; the record low 20°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.43 in, fell in 1923.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Stephenville 9 NNE, 12 miles south-southwest, 230 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
