The Port Lavaca 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.
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; warmer
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
30° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 32° in 1970.
Port Lavaca’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 30 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beaumont Formation, areas predominantly clay (clay, silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 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.
Rain that falls on Port Lavaca runs straight into the Gulf of America.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Port Lavaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Port Lavaca has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Port Lavaca normally reaches 74° and falls to 55°. The record high is 88°, in 1964; the record low 30°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.52 in, fell in 2023.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Point Comfort, 5 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
