The Cayucos 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
30° on Nov. 16, 1998, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 31° in 1982.
Cayucos’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cypress Mountain, about 2,960 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Franciscan Complex, unit 1 (Coast Ranges) (sandstone, mudstone), from the Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Miocene, 16 to 18 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 0.3 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.
Rain that falls on Cayucos runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cayucos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cayucos has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cayucos normally reaches 71° and falls to 48°. The record high is 88°, in 2021; the record low 33°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 2.67 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at San Luis Obispo Poly, 16 miles southeast, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
