The Sabinal 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy; cooler
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25° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1975. Next is 25° in 2018.
Sabinal’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Holy Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Leona Formation (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, 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 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Sabinal reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Sabinal, the Frio and the Nueces: about 280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Horseshoe Tank and Lake Corpus Christi.
120 miles of the trip are on the Frio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sabinal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sabinal has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sabinal normally reaches 74° and falls to 48°. The record high is 91°, in 1983; the record low 25°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1975 at Hondo Municipal Airport, 18 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
