The Castro Valley 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
85° on Nov. 15, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 77° in 2005.
Castro Valley’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sunol Peak, about 2,160 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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.
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 Castro Valley reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of San Lorenzo Creek: about 7 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Castro Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Castro Valley has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in September; winter nights fall to about 42° in January. About 19 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Castro Valley normally reaches 64° and falls to 46°. The record high is 82°, in 2008; the record low 37°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.68 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Oakland International Airport, 8 miles west-northwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
