The Highland 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
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
91° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 90° in 1949.
Highland’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,170 ft to 3,640 ft, a difference of 2,470 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Bernardino East Peak, about 10,670 ft, 15 miles east.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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 Highland reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Ana: about 70 river miles.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Highland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highland has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Highland normally reaches 73° and falls to 41°. The record high is 91°, in 2021; the record low 30°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at March Afb, 16 miles south-southwest, 140 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
