The Yoakum 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 cloudy
Showers likely
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
4.90 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 4.63 inches, fell in 1998.
Yoakum’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fleming Formation (clay, sandstone), from the Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.5 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 Yoakum reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Brushy Creek, Clarks Creek and the Lavaca: about 75 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Lavaca.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Yoakum; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Yoakum has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Yoakum normally reaches 75° and falls to 53°. The record high is 90°, in 2020; the record low 29°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 1.94 in, fell in 1923.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Hallettsville 2 N, 17 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
