The Zavalla 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
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
22° on Nov. 17, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1968. Next is 24° in 1969.
Zavalla’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moss Hill, about 460 ft, 2 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Manning Formation (sandstone-mudstone), from the Late Eocene, 34 to 38 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 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.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million 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 Zavalla reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sandy Creek, Shawnee Creek and the Neches: about 200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Sabine Lake and B A Steinhagen Lake.
110 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Zavalla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Zavalla has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 41° in January. About 60 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Zavalla normally reaches 70° and falls to 50°. The record high is 84°, in 2020; the record low 28°, in 2013. The most rain on this date, 2.65 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1968 at Sam Rayburn Dam, 20 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
