The Thunderbird Bay 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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16° on Nov. 11, 1950, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 19° in 1911.
Thunderbird Bay’s center stands about 1,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,410 ft to 1,580 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hog Mountains, about 1,980 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Home Creek Limestone and Colony Creek Shale, undivided (black-shale, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
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 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million 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 Thunderbird Bay reaches the Gulf of America by way of Brownwood Lake, Pecan Bayou and the Colorado: about 570 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls, Brownwood Lake 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 Thunderbird Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thunderbird Bay has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Thunderbird Bay normally reaches 69° and falls to 43°. The record high is 89°, in 1903; the record low 19°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.76 in, fell in 1934.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Brownwood 2 NE, 13 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
