The Crest 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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91° on Nov. 12, 1974, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 91° in 2008.
Crest’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,940 ft, a difference of 1,500 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Chiquito Peak, about 4,160 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 2 (Peninsular Ranges) (tonalite), from the Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Crest reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Sweetwater: about 25 river miles.
Often dry. About 60% 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 Crest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Crest has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in August; winter nights fall to about 42° in February. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Crest normally reaches 71° and falls to 48°. The record high is 91°, in 2008; the record low 32°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 1.03 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Alpine, 6 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
