The Edwards AFB 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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87° on Nov. 15, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 84° in 2007.
Edwards AFB’s center stands about 2,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,280 ft to 2,570 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Mesa, about 3,180 ft, 12 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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 0.3 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.
Rain that falls on Edwards AFB runs only a short way, about 2 miles, to Rogers Dry Lake. Rogers Dry Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Edwards AFB; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Edwards AFB has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Edwards AFB normally reaches 68° and falls to 35°. The record high is 83°, in 2021; the record low 22°, in 2012. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 from the Lancaster Area threaded record (Lancaster, 20 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
