The Fish Camp 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
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
7° on Nov. 12, 1985, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1941. Next is 9° in 1958.
Fish Camp’s center stands about 5,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,410 ft to 6,400 ft, a difference of 1,990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sing Peak, about 10,480 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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 2×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Fish Camp reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Big Creek, the South Fork Merced, the Merced, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 250 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake McClure.
120 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fish Camp; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fish Camp has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in February. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Fish Camp normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 72°, in 2025; the record low 11°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 6.12 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1941 at So Entrance Yosemite N.P., 2 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
