The La Cañada Flintridge 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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95° on Nov. 14, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 95° in 2021.
La Cañada Flintridge’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 860 ft to 3,120 ft, a difference of 2,260 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Granite Mountain, about 6,580 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Anorthosite, gabbro. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 La Cañada Flintridge reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles: about 35 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% 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 La Cañada Flintridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Cañada Flintridge has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 La Cañada Flintridge normally reaches 75° and falls to 50°. The record high is 95°, in 2016; the record low 29°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Pasadena, 4 miles southeast, 330 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
