The Avenal 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
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23° on Nov. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 23° in 2024.
Avenal’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Castle Mountain, about 4,290 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 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.
A raindrop that lands in Avenal reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of the Arroyo Vadoso: about 5 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
A lake that comes back. The bed of Tulare Lake is farmland now; in very wet years it floods again.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Avenal; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Avenal has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 8 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Avenal normally reaches 68° and falls to 42°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low 32°, in 1972. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Kettleman City, 9 miles east, 570 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
