The Imperial Beach 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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96° on Nov. 12, 1974, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 92° in 2008.
Imperial Beach’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Miguel Mountain, about 2,540 ft, 13 miles northeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. 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, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 0.5 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.
Rain that falls on Imperial Beach runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Imperial Beach; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Imperial Beach has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Imperial Beach normally reaches 70° and falls to 51°. The record high is 88°, in 2016; the record low 41°, in 2012. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Imperial Beach Ream Field Nas, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
