The El Paso de Robles (Paso Robles) 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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89° on Nov. 17, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 89° in 2025.
El Paso de Robles (Paso Robles)’s center stands about 970 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 690 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Frog Pond Mountain, about 2,400 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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 Paso de Robles (Paso Robles) reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Huerhuero Creek and the Salinas: about 130 river miles.
Often dry. About 80% 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 Paso de Robles (Paso Robles); river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Paso de Robles (Paso Robles) has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Paso de Robles (Paso Robles) normally reaches 70° and falls to 37°. The record high is 86°, in 2019; the record low 16°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 2.21 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Paso Robles, here, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
