The Quitaque 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
90° on Nov. 17, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 90° in 2025.
Quitaque’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,460 ft to 2,740 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quitaque Peaks, about 3,070 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lingos Formation (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 19×. 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: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Quitaque reaches the Gulf of America by way of Quitaque Creek, the North Pease, the Pease, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,240 river miles.
950 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Quitaque; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Quitaque has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 27° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 25 inches of water.
On November 14 Quitaque normally reaches 66° and falls to 38°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 15°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.84 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Turkey, 9 miles east-northeast, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
