The Anaheim 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.
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95° on Nov. 13, 2007, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is 95° in 2016.
Anaheim’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 1,270 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pleasants Peak, about 3,940 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene marine rocks (sandstone, mudstone), from the Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Anaheim reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Ana: about 25 river miles.
Often dry. About 50% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Anaheim; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Anaheim has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in August; winter nights fall to about 48° in December. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Anaheim normally reaches 77° and falls to 53°. The record high is 94°, in 2007; the record low 39°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Anaheim, 5 miles west, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
