The Van 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Chance of showers; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
4.97 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1883. The next wettest, 4.54 inches, fell in 1987.
Van’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wilcox Group, undivided (mudstone), from the Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 12 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 0.3 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 Van reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Sandy Creek and the Neches: about 410 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Sabine Lake, Lake Palestine and B A Steinhagen Lake.
220 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Van; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Van has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Van normally reaches 68° and falls to 47°. The record high is 88°, in 1955; the record low 23°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1970.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1883 from the Tyler Area threaded record (Tyler Pounds Field, 18 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
