The Coarsegold 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
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
84° on Nov. 17, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 83° in 1949.
Coarsegold’s center stands about 2,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,580 ft to 3,670 ft, a difference of 2,090 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Speckerman Mountain, about 7,150 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pre-Cenozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks undivided (schist, gneiss), from the Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 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 Coarsegold reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Coarse Gold Creek, the Fresno, the Eastside Bypass, Sand Slough, Mariposa Slough, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 230 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Coarsegold; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Coarsegold has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Coarsegold normally reaches 65° and falls to 37°. The record high is 82°, in 1990; the record low 23°, in 1993. The most rain on this date, 3.20 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at North Fork Rs, 11 miles east, 400 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
