The Dogtown 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.
79° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 2008.
Dogtown’s center stands about 120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 160 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buena Vista Peaks, about 820 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Dogtown reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Coyote Creek, Dry Creek, the Mokelumne, the South Mokelumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dogtown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dogtown has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dogtown normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 79°, in 1995; the record low 29°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Stockton Area threaded record (Stockton Airport, 22 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.