The Graniteville 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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14° on Nov. 16, 1964, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 15° in 1985.
Graniteville’s center stands about 5,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,400 ft to 6,290 ft, a difference of 2,890 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sierra Buttes, about 8,430 ft, 11 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 4 (Klamath Mountains and Northern Sierra Nevada) (granodiorite, trondhjemite), from the Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 364 to 400 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, trondhjemite. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 364 to 400 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.7 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 Graniteville reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Middle Yuba, the Yuba, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 180 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Graniteville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Graniteville has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in February. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Graniteville normally reaches 55° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 1995; the record low 15°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 5.50 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Bowman Dam, 4 miles east, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
