The Plains 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 85° in 1973.
Plains’s center stands about 3,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,590 ft to 3,710 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mexican Hill, about 3,800 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
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 59×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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 Plains reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beals Creek and the Colorado: about 960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls, E V Spence Reservoir 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 Plains; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plains has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in June; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Plains normally reaches 64° and falls to 33°. The record high is 84°, in 2025; the record low 6°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.16 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Plains, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
