The Monson 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
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Showers likely
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87° on Nov. 11, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1895. Next is 86° in 1900.
Monson’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goldstein Peak, about 2,800 ft, 14 miles northeast.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 5 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 Monson reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of the Tule: about 45 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 80% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
A lake that comes back. The bed of Tulare Lake is farmland now; in very wet years it floods again.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Monson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Monson has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 10 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Monson normally reaches 65° and falls to 44°. The record high is 85°, in 1986; the record low 24°, in 1911. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1895 at Visalia, 12 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
