The Fairmead 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
84° on Nov. 11, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1928. Next is 84° in 2016.
Fairmead’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 290 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Iron Mountain, about 940 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 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 Fairmead reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Eastside Bypass, Sand Slough, Mariposa Slough, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 180 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairmead; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fairmead has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fairmead normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 79°, in 1948; the record low 26°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.27 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1928 from the Madera Area threaded record (Madera Municipal Airport, 8 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
