The Valera 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
87° on Nov. 15, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1953. Next is 86° in 1989.
Valera’s center stands about 1,820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 1,980 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Robinson Peak, about 2,070 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jagger Bend and Valera Formations, undivided (shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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. 5 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 Valera reaches the Gulf of America by way of Home Creek and the Colorado: about 600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls 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 Valera; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valera has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 27 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Valera normally reaches 68° and falls to 41°. The record high is 84°, in 1988; the record low 18°, in 1976. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1953 at Hords Creek Dam, 6 miles north, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
