The Chinese Camp 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
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
21° on Nov. 12, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 24° in 1938.
Chinese Camp’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 880 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Telegraph Hill, about 3,740 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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. 2 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.
A raindrop that lands in Chinese Camp reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Don Pedro Reservoir, the Tuolumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 160 river miles.
Lake on the way: Don Pedro Reservoir.
80 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chinese Camp; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chinese Camp has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in December. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Chinese Camp normally reaches 64° and falls to 37°. The record high is 81°, in 1999; the record low 25°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 2.82 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Sonora, 7 miles north-northeast, 400 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
