The Novice 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
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
87° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 86° in 1989.
Novice’s center stands about 1,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,860 ft to 2,130 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 2,290 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antlers Sand (sandstone, claystone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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. 5 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 Novice reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Fork Jim Ned Creek, Jim Ned Creek, Pecan Bayou and the Colorado: about 630 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls, Brownwood Lake and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Novice; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Novice has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 27 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Novice normally reaches 68° and falls to 41°. The record high is 84°, in 1988; the record low 18°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Hords Creek Dam, 10 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
