The Granite Bay 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
26° on Nov. 17, 1961, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1856. Next is 27° in 1958.
Granite Bay’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thompson Hill, about 2,040 ft, 14 miles east.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Granite Bay reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Dry Creek and the Sacramento: about 90 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Granite Bay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Granite Bay has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Granite Bay normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 81°, in 2010; the record low 27°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1856 from the Sacramento Area threaded record (Sacramento Airport Asos, 25 miles southwest, 380 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
