The Contra Costa Centre 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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83° on Nov. 15, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1970. Next is 81° in 2010.
Contra Costa Centre’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Diablo, about 3,810 ft, 8 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 12 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.
A raindrop that lands in Contra Costa Centre reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Grayson Creek and Walnut Creek: about 9 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Contra Costa Centre; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Contra Costa Centre has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 45° in January. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Contra Costa Centre normally reaches 66° and falls to 50°. The record high is 82°, in 2008; the record low 37°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1970 at Oakland Museum, 14 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
