The Rio Hondo 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.
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31° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 36° in 2019.
Rio Hondo’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 40 ft, a difference of 30 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium in Rio Grande, subdivided into areas predominantly of clay (silt, clay), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Rio Hondo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arroyo Colorado: about 20 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rio Hondo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rio Hondo has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rio Hondo normally reaches 80° and falls to 58°. The record high is 92°, in 2020; the record low 31°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.11 in, fell in 2019.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Harlingen Rio Grande Valley International Airport, 5 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
