The Palo Pinto 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.
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91° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 89° in 1950.
Palo Pinto’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Crawford Mountain, about 1,470 ft, 4 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Palo Pinto Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 3 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 Palo Pinto reaches the Gulf of America by way of Town Branch, Eagle Creek and the Brazos: about 680 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Palo Pinto; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Palo Pinto has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Palo Pinto normally reaches 68° and falls to 43°. The record high is 87°, in 1989; the record low 19°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 2.36 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Mineral Wells Airport, 14 miles east, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
