The Terlingua 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.
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92° on Nov. 17, 2024, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 91° in 2012.
Terlingua’s center stands about 2,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,320 ft to 2,980 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Paisano Peak, about 5,360 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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. 2 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 Terlingua 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 Terlingua; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Terlingua 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 Terlingua 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, 11 miles west, 170 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
