The Fellows 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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19° on Nov. 13, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 20° in 1975.
Fellows’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 980 ft to 2,680 ft, a difference of 1,700 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McKittrick Summit, about 4,320 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
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 6×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 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 Fellows reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of Broad Creek: about 9 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
A lake that comes back. The bed of Tulare Lake is farmland now; in very wet years it floods again.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fellows; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fellows has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fellows normally reaches 68° and falls to 36°. The record high is 88°, in 1995; the record low 26°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.18 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at New Cuyama Fire Station, 18 miles south-southwest, 800 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
