The Barstow 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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20° on Nov. 16, 1994, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1980. Next is 24° in 1985.
Barstow’s center stands about 2,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,040 ft to 2,800 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stoddard Mountain, about 4,820 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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 10×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 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.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 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 Barstow reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of the Mojave: about 60 river miles. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 60% 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 Barstow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Barstow has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 102° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 5 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Barstow normally reaches 68° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1995; the record low 26°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.12 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1980 at Barstow, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
