The Atwater 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 sunny
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
22° on Nov. 15, 1905, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 24° in 1938.
Atwater’s center stands about 160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 190 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary sand deposits, unit 2 (inland), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Atwater reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Bear Creek, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Atwater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Atwater has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Atwater normally reaches 67° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1933; the record low 25°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Merced Area threaded record (Merced Municipal Airport, 7 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
