The Joshua Tree 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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22° on Nov. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1935. Next is 25° in 1938.
Joshua Tree’s center stands about 2,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,520 ft to 4,050 ft, a difference of 1,530 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quail Mountain, about 5,790 ft, 10 miles south-southeast.
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 7×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 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.
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.
Joshua Tree has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 104° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Joshua Tree normally reaches 72° and falls to 48°. The record high is 93°, in 1942; the record low 27°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.16 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1935 at Twentynine Palms, 16 miles east, 760 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
