The Lytle 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.
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 27° in 1970.
Lytle’s center stands about 720 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 650 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Loma Alta, about 1,150 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, carbonate. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Lytle reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the West Prong Atascosa, the Atascosa, the Frio and the Nueces: about 210 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Corpus Christi.
100 miles of the trip are on the Atascosa.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lytle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lytle has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lytle normally reaches 72° and falls to 49°. The record high is 88°, in 2025; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at San Antonio Kelly Field Afb, 16 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.