The Matador 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
91° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1947. Next is 88° in 1995.
Matador’s center stands about 2,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,260 ft to 2,560 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Antelope Hill, about 2,700 ft, 9 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lingos Formation (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 21×. 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: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 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 Matador reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ballard Creek, the Middle Pease, the Pease, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,240 river miles.
950 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Matador; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Matador has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 23 inches of water.
On November 14 Matador normally reaches 64° and falls to 38°. The record high is 88°, in 2025; the record low 13°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.73 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1947 at Matador, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
