The Santa Rita Ranch 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
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 13, 2013, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 24° in 2018.
Santa Rita Ranch’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chalk Knob, about 1,330 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
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 Rita Ranch reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork San Gabriel, the San Gabriel, the Little River and the Brazos: about 430 river miles.
Lake on the way: Granger Lake.
320 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Rita Ranch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Rita Ranch has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Santa Rita Ranch normally reaches 70° and falls to 47°. The record high is 86°, in 2006; the record low 26°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Georgetown Lake, 7 miles east, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
