The Sundown 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
0° on Nov. 14, 1976, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 12° in 1959.
Sundown’s center stands about 3,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,500 ft to 3,600 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Sundown has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 18 inches of water.
On November 14 Sundown normally reaches 63° and falls to 34°. The record high is 85°, in 2025; the record low 0°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 at Levelland, 9 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
