The Arvin 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.
89° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 88° in 1900.
Arvin’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 380 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Mountain, about 6,940 ft, 11 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 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.
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.
Arvin has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 6 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Arvin normally reaches 68° and falls to 46°. The record high is 85°, in 1933; the record low 24°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 1952.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Bakersfield Area threaded record (Bakersfield Airport, 20 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.