The Madison 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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3.52 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1906. The next wettest, 2.68 inches, fell in 1972.
Madison’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 220 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Berryessa Peak, about 3,010 ft, 12 miles west.
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 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 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 Madison reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of South Fork Willow Slough, Willow Slough, Prospect Slough, Cache Slough and the Sacramento: about 70 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 84°, in 1995; the record low 29°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 2.82 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Winters, 10 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
