The Los Ranchos 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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30° on Nov. 16, 1998, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 31° in 1982.
Los Ranchos’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hi Mountain, about 3,170 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
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 9 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.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Los Ranchos reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Davenport Creek and San Luis Obispo Creek: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Los Ranchos; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Los Ranchos has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in August; winter nights fall to about 44° in January. About 22 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Los Ranchos normally reaches 71° and falls to 48°. The record high is 88°, in 2021; the record low 33°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 2.67 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at San Luis Obispo Poly, 7 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
