The San Benito 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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3.38 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1911. The next wettest, 2.71 inches, fell in 1967.
San Benito’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 50 ft, a difference of 20 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium in Rio Grande, subdivided into areas predominantly of sand (silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 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, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 San Benito reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cayo Atascoso: about 45 river miles.
Lake on the way: Laguna Atascosa.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of San Benito; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
San Benito has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 51° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 San Benito normally reaches 80° and falls to 59°. The record high is 92°, in 1921; the record low 36°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.73 in, fell in 1950.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Harlingen, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
