The Lake Elsinore 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 1897. Next is 25° in 1964.
Lake Elsinore’s center stands about 1,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,240 ft to 1,800 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santiago Peak, about 5,660 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 0.3 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 Elsinore reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Temescal Wash and the Santa Ana: about 60 river miles.
Often dry. About 70% 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 Lake Elsinore; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Elsinore has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Elsinore normally reaches 74° and falls to 46°. The record high is 94°, in 1906; the record low 25°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Elsinore, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
