The Macdona 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.
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 27° in 1970.
Macdona’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Loma Alta, about 1,150 ft, 12 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 35×. 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, carbonate. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million 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. 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 Macdona reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Medina, the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 250 river miles.
210 miles of the trip are on the San Antonio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Macdona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Macdona 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 Macdona 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, 8 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
