The Lompoc 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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90° on Nov. 16, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 89° in 1990.
Lompoc’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 1,070 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sudden Peak, about 2,100 ft, 6 miles south-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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Lompoc reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of San Miguelito Creek and the Santa Ynez: about 11 river miles.
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 Lompoc; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lompoc has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lompoc normally reaches 70° and falls to 46°. The record high is 88°, in 2008; the record low 30°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 2.59 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Lompoc, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
