The Bell Canyon 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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4.43 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1949. The next wettest, 3.50 inches, fell in 2025.
Bell Canyon’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 2,050 ft, a difference of 1,190 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Oat Mountain, about 3,740 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Cretaceous marine rocks, unit 1 (Upper Great Valley Sequence) (sandstone, siltstone-mudstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 25 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Bell Canyon reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Bell Creek and the Los Angeles: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bell Canyon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bell Canyon has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Bell Canyon normally reaches 77° and falls to 46°. The record high is 96°, in 2021; the record low 25°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Woodland Hills Pierce College, 7 miles east-southeast, 600 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
