The Runaway Bay 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
90° on Nov. 16, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 87° in 1955.
Runaway Bay’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 820 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wampler Hill, about 1,250 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jasper Creek Formation (sandstone-mudstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 38×. 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, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.6 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 Runaway Bay reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Lake Bridgeport, the West Fork Trinity and the Trinity: about 580 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake, Lake Bridgeport, Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Worth.
270 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Runaway Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Runaway Bay has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Runaway Bay normally reaches 66° and falls to 41°. The record high is 87°, in 1960; the record low 15°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.48 in, fell in 1991.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at Jacksboro, 17 miles west, 160 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
