The Durham 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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85° on Nov. 11, 1930, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 85° in 1932.
Durham’s center stands about 160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 210 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jordan Hill, about 1,960 ft, 15 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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 8 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 Durham reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Durham Slough, Butte Creek and the Sacramento: about 170 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Durham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Durham has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 27 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Durham normally reaches 65° and falls to 40°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low 26°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Chico University Farm, 3 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
