The Refugio 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
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
90° on Nov. 11, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 89° in 2006.
Refugio’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 20 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Refugio reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek and the Mission: about 20 river miles.
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 Refugio; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Refugio has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Refugio normally reaches 75° and falls to 53°. The record high is 87°, in 2024; the record low 28°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.05 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Welder W'Life Foundation, 16 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
