The La Selva 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
88° on Nov. 15, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 84° in 2005.
La Selva Beach’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Loma Prieta, about 3,780 ft, 12 miles north.
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 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Rain that falls on La Selva Beach runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of La Selva Beach; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
La Selva Beach has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 39° in December. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Watsonville Municipal Airport, 4 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
