The Rice 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; cooler
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.23 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 3.62 inches, fell in 1971.
Rice’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 470 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Neylandville and Marlbrook Marls, undivided (claystone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 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 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.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Rice reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Chambers Creek, Richland Creek and the Trinity: about 380 river miles.
Lake on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake.
140 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rice; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rice has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in August; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rice normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 88°, in 2005; the record low 23°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.22 in, fell in 1902.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Corsicana, 8 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
