The El Rio 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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95° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is 94° in 1949.
El Rio’s center stands about 90 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 250 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Boney Mountain, about 2,960 ft, 15 miles east-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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 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.
Rain that falls on El Rio runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Rio; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
El Rio has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 El Rio normally reaches 73° and falls to 49°. The record high is 94°, in 1949; the record low 35°, in 1932. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 from the Oxnard Area threaded record (Oxnard Wfo, 3 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
