The Potosi 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
90° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 87° in 1911.
Potosi’s center stands about 1,830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,780 ft to 2,090 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Eagle Mountain, about 2,270 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lueders Formation (shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone. 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 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Potosi reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lytle Creek, Cedar Creek, Elm Creek, the Clear Fork and the Brazos: about 960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Possum Kingdom Lake, Lake Granbury and Fort Phantom Hill Lake.
550 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Potosi; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Potosi has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Potosi normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 from the Abilene Area threaded record (Abilene Regional Airport, 6 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
