The El Granada 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. 16, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 80° in 2005.
El Granada’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,730 ft, a difference of 1,730 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Morena Sierra, about 2,450 ft, 11 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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.
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 Granada reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Deer Creek: about 1 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Granada; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Granada has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 66° in August; winter nights fall to about 43° in January. About 26 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Granada normally reaches 63° and falls to 45°. The record high is 76°, in 2021; the record low 34°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 1.80 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Half Moon Bay, 3 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
