The Sterling City 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
88° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 87° in 2021.
Sterling City’s center stands about 2,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,240 ft to 2,640 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Top, about 2,520 ft, 2 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Formation (sand), from the Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.4 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 Sterling City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Concho, the Concho and the Colorado: about 740 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sterling City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sterling City has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Sterling City normally reaches 69° and falls to 39°. The record high is 87°, in 2025; the record low 15°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Water Valley, 19 miles southeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
