The Sanctuary 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
91° on Nov. 17, 2019, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 90° in 2013.
Sanctuary’s center stands about 790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 980 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Indian Knob, about 1,270 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paluxy Sand (sandstone), 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.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 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 Sanctuary reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Ash Creek, the West Fork Trinity and the Trinity: about 540 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake, 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 Sanctuary; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sanctuary has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sanctuary normally reaches 69° and falls to 48°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 25°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Fort Worth Nas, 13 miles southeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
