The Study Butte 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
92° on Nov. 17, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 91° in 2012.
Study Butte’s center stands about 2,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,420 ft to 3,210 ft, a difference of 790 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Emory Peak, about 7,710 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, trachyte, felsic-volcanic. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 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. 4 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 Study Butte reaches the Gulf of America by way of Terlingua Creek and the Rio Grande: about 900 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
280 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Study Butte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Study Butte has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 102° in June; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Study Butte normally reaches 77° and falls to 43°. The record high is 88°, in 2025; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.08 in, fell in 2019.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Lajitas, 14 miles west-southwest, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
