The Big Bear City 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; warmer
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 70° in 2008.
Big Bear City’s center stands about 6,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,700 ft to 7,940 ft, a difference of 1,240 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Gorgonio Mountain, about 11,470 ft, 11 miles south.
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 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 2×. 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 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Jurassic, 145 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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.
Big Bear City straddles the rim of a basin with no outlet. Rain on the east side runs to the desert basins of the Mojave; most of the rest goes to the Pacific Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Big Bear Lake, Bear Creek and the Santa Ana: about 100 river miles. One that lands on the east side reaches the desert basins of the Mojave by way of Arrastre Creek: about 17 river miles. The desert basins of the Mojave has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Big Bear Lake.
80 miles of the trip are on the Santa Ana.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Bear City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Bear City has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Big Bear City normally reaches 54° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 2021; the record low 8°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Big Bear Lake, 4 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
