The Salado 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
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1983. Next is 25° in 2019.
Salado’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hog Mountain, about 1,100 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Edwards and Comanche Peak Limestones, undivided (limestone, dolostone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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 Salado reaches the Gulf of America by way of Salado Creek, the Little River and the Brazos: about 430 river miles.
320 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salado; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salado has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salado normally reaches 70° and falls to 46°. The record high is 89°, in 1989; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.32 in, fell in 2015.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1983 at Killeen, 12 miles northwest, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
