The El Cerrito 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
23° on Nov. 11, 1950, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 25° in 1958.
El Cerrito’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 1,870 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santiago Peak, about 5,660 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 2 (Peninsular Ranges) (tonalite), from the Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 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. 1 smaller unit 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 El Cerrito reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Temescal Wash and the Santa Ana: about 45 river miles.
Often dry. About 60% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Cerrito; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Cerrito has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 43° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Cerrito normally reaches 75° and falls to 48°. The record high is 95°, in 1906; the record low 27°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Riverside Area threaded record (Riverside Municipal Airport, 9 miles north-northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
