The Mountain City 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
5.75 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.12 inches, fell in 2001.
Mountain City’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lone Woman Mountain, about 1,390 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Austin Chalk (marlstone, chalk), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, carbonate. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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. 2 smaller units 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 Mountain City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mustang Branch, Onion Creek and the Colorado: about 310 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mountain City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mountain City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mountain City normally reaches 72° and falls to 49°. The record high is 89°, in 1951; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 2.03 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at San Marcos, 11 miles south-southwest, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
