The Poteet 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.
98° on Nov. 16, 1986, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 98° in 2010.
Poteet’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 530 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queen City Sand (siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 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 52×. 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. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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. 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 Poteet reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Atascosa, the Frio and the Nueces: about 180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Corpus Christi.
70 miles of the trip are on the Atascosa.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Poteet; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Poteet has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Poteet normally reaches 75° and falls to 50°. The record high is 91°, in 1983; the record low 30°, in 1975. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Poteet, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.