The Mustang Ridge 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
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 25° in 2014.
Mustang Ridge’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Carpenter Hills, about 890 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Navarro Group and Marlbrook Marl, undivided (clay, siltstone-mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 4 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 Mustang Ridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cowpen Creek, Elm Creek, Plum Creek, the San Marcos, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 250 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Guadalupe.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mustang Ridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mustang Ridge has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mustang Ridge normally reaches 72° and falls to 47°. The record high is 89°, in 2020; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, 9 miles north, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
