The Camp Pendleton Mainside 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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30° on Nov. 16, 2009, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1968. Next is 31° in 2018.
Camp Pendleton Mainside’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Margarita Peak, about 3,160 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eocene marine rocks (mudstone, sandstone), from the Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 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 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Camp Pendleton Mainside reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Margarita: about 6 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Camp Pendleton Mainside; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Camp Pendleton Mainside has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1968 at Camp Pendleton Mcas, here, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
