The Tatum 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
Showers likely; cooler
Showers likely; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
19° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 20° in 1916.
Tatum’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.1 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 Tatum reaches the Gulf of America by way of Martin Creek and the Sabine: about 300 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Toledo Bend Reservoir and Sabine Lake.
140 miles of the trip are on the Sabine.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tatum; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tatum has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tatum normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 89°, in 1955; the record low 22°, in 1907. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 from the Longview Area threaded record (Longview E Tx Regional Airport, 13 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
