The El Centro 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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31° on Nov. 16, 1964, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 32° in 1928.
El Centro’s center stands about 40 ft below sea level. Within three miles the land runs from -60 ft to -20 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 64×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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.
El Centro has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 108° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in December. About 2 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Centro normally reaches 79° and falls to 49°. The record high is 91°, in 1934; the record low 33°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 from the El Centro Area threaded record (Imperial County Airport, 3 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
