The Chowchilla 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
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Showers likely
Showers likely
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84° on Nov. 11, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 84° in 2016.
Chowchilla’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 270 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flat Top Mountain, about 790 ft, 13 miles 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 53×. 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 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
A raindrop that lands in Chowchilla reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Eastside Bypass, Sand Slough, Mariposa Slough, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 180 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chowchilla; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chowchilla has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Chowchilla normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 79°, in 1948; the record low 26°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.27 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 from the Madera Area threaded record (Madera Municipal Airport, 13 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
