The Sam Rayburn 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; cooler
Showers likely
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
22° on Nov. 17, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1968. Next is 24° in 1969.
Sam Rayburn’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 420 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Hills, about 510 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catahoula Formation (mudstone, sand), from the Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, sand. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Sam Rayburn reaches the Gulf of America by way of Ester Lake, the Angelina and the Neches: about 180 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Ester Lake, Sabine Lake and B A Steinhagen Lake.
110 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sam Rayburn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sam Rayburn has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sam Rayburn normally reaches 70° and falls to 50°. The record high is 84°, in 2020; the record low 28°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.65 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1968 at Sam Rayburn Dam, 4 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
