The Lancaster 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
87° on Nov. 15, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 84° in 2007.
Lancaster’s center stands about 2,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,310 ft to 2,480 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount McDill, about 5,160 ft, 12 miles southwest.
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 2 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Cretaceous to Eocene, 34 to 100 million years old. About 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.
Rain that falls on Lancaster runs straight into the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lancaster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lancaster has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lancaster normally reaches 68° and falls to 35°. The record high is 83°, in 2021; the record low 22°, in 2012. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 from the Lancaster Area threaded record (Lancaster, 5 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
