The Bear Creek 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.
Bear Creek’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 220 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Three Buttes, about 1,030 ft, 13 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 44×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 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.
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 Bear Creek reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Hartley Slough, Owens Creek, Bear Creek, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 160 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bear Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bear Creek 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 Bear Creek 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, 6 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
