The Lake California 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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88° on Nov. 13, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 87° in 1933.
Lake California’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Inskip Hill, about 3,080 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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 16×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dacite, andesite. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 0.6 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.
A raindrop that lands in Lake California reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Sacramento: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake California; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake California has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Lake California normally reaches 65° and falls to 42°. The record high is 87°, in 1933; the record low 23°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 2.32 in, fell in 1934.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Redding Area threaded record (Redding Airport, 12 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
