The Aliso Viejo 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.
34° on Nov. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1921. Next is 37° in 1938.
Aliso Viejo’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santiago Peak, about 5,660 ft, 15 miles northeast.
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 9×. 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: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Aliso Viejo has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in September; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Aliso Viejo normally reaches 69° and falls to 55°. The record high is 81°, in 1940; the record low 39°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1921 at Newport Beach Harbor, 9 miles west-northwest, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.