The Uncertain 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
Chance of showers; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
19° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 21° in 1997.
Uncertain’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 7 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 10 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Uncertain reaches the Gulf of America by way of Clear Lake, Twelvemile Bayou, Cross Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 440 river miles.
Lake on the way: Clear Lake.
260 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Uncertain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Uncertain has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Uncertain normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 82°, in 2007; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.52 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Jefferson, 14 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
