The Luling 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.
21° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 23° in 1970.
Luling’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Mountain, about 670 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wilcox Group, undivided (mudstone), from the Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 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 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.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 0.8 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 Luling reaches the Gulf of America by way of Salt Branch, Plum Creek, the San Marcos, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 210 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Guadalupe.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Luling; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Luling has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Luling normally reaches 74° and falls to 49°. The record high is 90°, in 2020; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Luling, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.