The Murchison 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
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.97 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1883. The next wettest, 4.54 inches, fell in 1987.
Murchison’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tater Hill Mountain, about 800 ft, 11 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queen City Sand (siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
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 Murchison reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Duncan Branch, Kickapoo Creek and the Neches: about 410 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Sabine Lake, Lake Palestine and B A Steinhagen Lake.
220 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Murchison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Murchison has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Murchison normally reaches 68° and falls to 47°. The record high is 88°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1883 from the Tyler Area threaded record (Tyler Pounds Field, 21 miles east-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
