The Merkel 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
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90° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 87° in 1911.
Merkel’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,790 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 2,410 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clear Fork Group (claystone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 24×. 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. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 Merkel reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bitter Creek, the Clear Fork and the Brazos: about 980 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Possum Kingdom Lake and Lake Granbury.
550 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Merkel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Merkel has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Merkel normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 from the Abilene Area threaded record (Abilene Regional Airport, 20 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
