The Creston 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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89° on Nov. 16, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 86° in 1990.
Creston’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 3,590 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 Creston reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Huerhuero Creek and the Salinas: about 140 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Salinas.
Often dry. About 80% 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 Creston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Creston has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Creston normally reaches 69° and falls to 37°. The record high is 83°, in 2021; the record low 24°, in 1980. The most rain on this date, 2.12 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Paso Robles Municipal Airport, 12 miles north-northwest, 300 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
