The Cold Springs 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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6.70 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1955. The next wettest, 6.13 inches, fell in 2017.
Cold Springs’s center stands about 5,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,000 ft to 6,670 ft, a difference of 2,670 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cooper Peak, about 9,560 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Cold Springs reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Tuolumne, the Tuolumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 190 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 Cold Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cold Springs has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. A normal year brings about 108 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Cold Springs normally reaches 58° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1995; the record low 13°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 4.10 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Cherry Valley Dam, 15 miles south-southeast, 820 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
