The Elfin Forest 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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96° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 94° in 2019.
Elfin Forest’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 1,270 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Woodson Mountain, about 2,830 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic volcanic rocks, unit 4 (Peninsular Ranges) (felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic), from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Elfin Forest reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Escondido Creek: about 11 river miles.
Often dry. About 40% 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 Elfin Forest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Elfin Forest has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in December. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elfin Forest normally reaches 75° and falls to 50°. The record high is 93°, in 1949; the record low 24°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.47 in, fell in 1950.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Escondido Area threaded record (Escondido No. 2, 5 miles northeast, 200 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
