The Preston 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
Showers likely
Chance of showers; warmer
Sunny
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
8.22 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1897. The next wettest, 6.03 inches, fell in 1978.
Preston’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 740 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Antlers Sand (sandstone, claystone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 63×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Preston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 820 river miles.
690 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Preston has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Preston normally reaches 64° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 21°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 7.93 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Sherman, 11 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
