The Bakersfield 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
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
89° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 88° in 1900.
Bakersfield’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 380 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Mountain, about 1,590 ft, 11 miles northeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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.
Bakersfield 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 Bakersfield 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, 5 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
