The Imperial 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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31° on Nov. 16, 1964, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 32° in 1928.
Imperial’s center stands about 60 ft below sea level. Within three miles the land runs from -90 ft to -40 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. 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 21 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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.
Imperial has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 108° in July; winter nights fall to about 41° in December. About 2 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Imperial normally reaches 79° and falls to 49°. The record high is 91°, in 1934; the record low 33°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 from the El Centro Area threaded record (Imperial County Airport, here). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
