The Somerset 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
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
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Partly cloudy
24° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 27° in 1970.
Somerset’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Padrone Hill, about 940 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wilcox Group, undivided (mudstone), from the Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 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 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.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
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 Somerset reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elm Creek, the Medina, the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 250 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Somerset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Somerset has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Somerset normally reaches 72° and falls to 49°. The record high is 88°, in 2025; the record low 24°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at San Antonio Kelly Field Afb, 12 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
