The Downieville 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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82° on Nov. 13, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1908. Next is 75° in 1921.
Downieville’s center stands about 2,950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,890 ft to 5,640 ft, a difference of 2,750 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sierra Buttes, about 8,430 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleozoic marine rocks, undivided, unit 4 (Western Sierra Nevada) (argillite, quartzite, phyllite), from the Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Downieville reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Pauley Creek, the North Yuba, the Yuba, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 180 river miles.
Lake on the way: New Bullards Bar Reservoir.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Downieville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Downieville has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in December. A normal year brings about 26 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 65 inches of water.
On November 14 Downieville normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 79°, in 1995; the record low 21°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 3.10 in, fell in 1952.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Downieville, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
