The Cerritos 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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95° on Nov. 12, 1974, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 95° in 2021.
Cerritos’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 90 ft, a difference of 60 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Workman Hill, about 1,360 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 0.4 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 Cerritos reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Coyote Creek and the San Gabriel: about 9 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cerritos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cerritos has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cerritos normally reaches 73° and falls to 52°. The record high is 91°, in 2007; the record low 39°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 1.07 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 from the Long Beach Area threaded record (Long Beach Daugherty Airport, 6 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
