The Santa Clara 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
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
21° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 25° in 1969.
Santa Clara’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mission Hill, about 970 ft, 8 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Navarro Group and Marlbrook Marl, undivided (clay, siltstone-mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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, carbonate. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Santa Clara reaches the Gulf of America by way of Santa Clara Creek, Cibolo Creek, the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 210 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the San Antonio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Clara; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Clara has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Randolph Afb, 7 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
