The Chula Vista 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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92° on Nov. 13, 1974, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1918. Next is 90° in 1949.
Chula Vista’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 340 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Otay Mountain, about 3,520 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 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.
Rain that falls on Chula Vista runs only a short way, about 3 miles, to the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chula Vista; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chula Vista has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in January. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Chula Vista normally reaches 72° and falls to 51°. The record high is 90°, in 1949; the record low 38°, in 1935. The most rain on this date, 1.31 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1918 at Chula Vista, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
