The Mendocino 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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29° on Nov. 11, 1978, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 30° in 1938.
Mendocino’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Hill, about 1,310 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, 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 14×. 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: Late Cretaceous to Pliocene, 2.6 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Mendocino runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mendocino; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mendocino has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 65° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Mendocino normally reaches 56° and falls to 43°. The record high is 71°, in 1969; the record low 31°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1952.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Fort Bragg 5 N, 14 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
