The Tuscola 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
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90° on Nov. 17, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1885. Next is 87° in 1911.
Tuscola’s center stands about 1,980 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,920 ft to 2,140 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buzzard Mountain, about 2,380 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clear Fork Group (claystone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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.
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 Tuscola reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jim Ned Creek, Pecan Bayou and the Colorado: about 640 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 Tuscola; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tuscola has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 4 inches of snow.
On November 14 Tuscola normally reaches 68° and falls to 44°. The record high is 89°, in 2025; the record low 14°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1885 from the Abilene Area threaded record (Abilene Regional Airport, 15 miles north-northeast, 190 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
