The Litchfield 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
71° on Nov. 13, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1896.
Litchfield’s center stands about 4,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,010 ft to 5,430 ft, a difference of 1,420 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thompson Peak, about 7,740 ft, 13 miles southwest.
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 8×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 0.8 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 Litchfield reaches Honey Lake by way of the Susan: about 16 river miles. Honey Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 40% 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 Litchfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Litchfield has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Litchfield normally reaches 52° and falls to 28°. The record high is 68°, in 1995; the record low 1°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.58 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Susanville 2 SW, 15 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
